Invisible landscapes

Students' constructions of the social and the natural in an engineering course in South Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID3620498
AuthorsArlene Archer (0000-0001-9013-7788, University of Cape Town, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume35
Issue2
Pages258-275
Publication date2009-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533950903076220
OpenAlexW2052724257
LanguageEN
References cited15

This paper examines the discourses that students draw on and propagate in a course on rural development in a first‐year engineering foundation programme. It looks at the way ‘rural’ is often constructed as ‘lack’ and therefore ‘other’, the dangers of constructing development as linear, the ways nostalgia and utopianism feed into discourses of development and how ‘propriety’ serves to maintain boundaries between nature and people, society and individuals. Different modes and media, coupled with the degree of regulation in the classroom, may enable alternate discourses to emerge or to be suppressed. This paper argues that the curriculum needs to engage with students’ views in order to understand, interrogate and critique the kinds of realities they feed into

Archaeology · Curriculum · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Geography · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Engineering · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Practises and Engagement · Law · Philosophy · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

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