Engineering problems are not naturally restricted to artificial discipline-oriented boundaries (Ertas et al. 2003). To solve such complex problems, future engineers need to collaborate with both (academic) experts and non-academic stakeholders from different fields and backgrounds and take various perspectives into account. Societal stakeholders can contribute valuable input to support the creation of engineering solutions. Addressing big challenges (as the 14 grand engineering challenges formulated by the National Academy of Engineering) demands a joint effort of diverse teams, different disciplines, different companies, people viewing and tackling the problems from different perspectives and angles. The students we are educating now are likely to be part of such teams, which are not separated from the economic, societal and political aspects of our society. One of the main questions that we thus need to ask, whether we are educating students now to be part of such inter- and transdisciplinary teams and whether they can navigate in the societal trends.

As a result, in any engineering development, future engineers must consistently be aware of the size and extent of the impact. The fact that this comes with major uncertainties implies that future engineers should not only be educated in the “hard” technique and management of stakeholders but also in how to deal with uncertainty. Technical and social systems in society have become complex or wicked; consequently, a planned and control-focused approach will invariably fail. Even when not designing them themselves, engineers need skills to cope with unanticipated events, values and stakeholder positions.

This requires students to learn how to anticipate the social, technical, societal and environmental impact of their actions. For this, they need skills that transcend the ‘hard’ scientific and technical skills related to disciplinary education and focus also on e.g. transdisciplinary skills. Tan et al. (2019) listed systems thinking, metacognition, empathy, and open-mindedness as essential for reaching transdisciplinarity.

Much has been written about the necessity of such skills, but less about how these could be translated to effective learning and teaching strategies for specific, dedicated and desired learning outcomes fitting to the development level (1st to 5th year students) of the students within their respective programs (BSc, Minor, Master) that are also assessable in an educational context.

In this session, we will briefly discuss the necessity of an approach to dissecting transdisciplinary tools into their basic concepts, collecting already existing pedagogical methods, and designing new ways to practice these skills. Then, we will ask the audience to participate in a quick brainstorm session to generate ideas for how systems thinking, metacognition, empathy, or open-mindedness could be incorporated in educational programmes. After sharing the results of the brainstorming, our panel will discuss some important aspects of transdisciplinary education we came across during or university-wide research on teaching practices, led by statements and dilemmas.

Panel sessions setup

• 10 minutes impulse talk by the session leaders

• 30 minutes interactive format with input from the audience (brainstorming in small groups of participants facilitated by the contributors, with materials brought by the session leaders)

• 20 minutes panel discussion by involving the audience, asking for choosing from dilemmas and agreeing or disagreeing with statements, with a panel of available experts in engineering education, to be invited later.@en

In this chapter, we explore potential synergies between Technology Assessment (TA) and Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI). We first investigate the intersection of TA and RRI by discussing their similarities and differences and then discuss how TA and RRI differ in their historical roots, objects of reflection, and timing. Building on this theoretical exploration, we share our firsthand experiences in three large European projects that revolved around studying and implementing RRI within industrial settings. By examining and leveraging potential synergies between TA and RRI, our objective is to enhance the overall governance of emerging technologies. Reflecting on our findings with the aforementioned literature streams, we highlight overarching practical challenges that one might encounter when using TA or RRI in industrial contexts. In sum, this chapter not only advances theoretical understanding but also offers practical insights with implications for future research and applications in the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation.@en

This chapter discusses principles, frameworks, and steps for designing a roadmap to implement Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in industrial practices. It is based on invaluable experience gathered from the EU-funded PRISMA project, in which a trans-disciplinary group of experts from research, industries, and policy developed guidelines to include relevant societal values in the development strategy of innovative products. These guidelines are built on existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and quality, risk and innovation management standards and policies. Fundamentally, they provide a management standard (Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle) that could help companies to introduce structural changes in their usual business practices toward more anticipatory, inclusive, and RRI practices (responsibility-by-design). The guidelines can be used by researchers, businesses, and innovators to develop long-term strategies (roadmaps) for Responsible Innovation, which, in turn, help organizations identify and achieve technologies geared toward ethically and socially desirable outcomes.

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In this whitepaper, we address an issue that has been emerging within the academic community: how do we align our personal career perspectives with ideas of democratic, open and inclusive research and innovation strategies? We address this issue and voice our concerns regarding the governance of this alignment within our lovely institution in the hope that it provides a starting point for further deliberation amongst our scholars and students. @en

Literature proposes numerous initiatives for optimization of the Operating Room (OR). Despite multiple suggested strategies for the optimization of workflow on the OR, its patients and (medical) staff, no uniform description of ‘optimization’ has been adopted. This makes it difficult to evaluate the proposed optimization strategies. In particular, the metrics used to quantify OR performance are diverse so that assessing the impact of suggested approaches is complex or even impossible. To secure a higher implementation success rate of optimisation strategies in practice we believe OR optimisation and its quantification should be further investigated. We aim to provide an inventory of the metrics and methods used to optimise the OR by the means of a structured literature study. We observe that several aspects of OR performance are unaddressed in literature, and no studies account for possible interactions between metrics of quality and efficiency. We conclude that a systems approach is needed to align metrics across different elements of OR performance, and that the wellbeing of healthcare professionals is underrepresented in current optimisation approaches.

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While originally intended to transform research and innovation practice, the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has largely remained a theoretical, policy-oriented construct, thereby engendering a perception that RRI indicators are very different from organizational or business indicators. As there is currently limited experience with RRI in businesses, in an attempt to gain more insights into RRI in practice, this paper focuses on an exploratory assessment of key performance indicators (KPIs) in a nanomedicine project. Based on correspondence analysis, we visually demonstrate associations among KPIs of RRI dimensions and of organizational ongoing R&D dimensions implying that these two indicators are not entirely different from each other and may even be potentially aligned. This finding may stimulate the motives of the RRI uptake in practice.@en

There is now almost a decade of experience with RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation), including a growing emphasis on RRI in industry. Based on our experiences in the EU-funded project PRISMA, we find that the companies we engaged could be motivated to do RRI, but often only after we first shifted initial assumptions and strategies. Accordingly, we formulate six lessons we learned in the expectation that they will be relevant both for RRI in industry as well as for the future of RRI more broadly. These lessons are: (1) Strategize for stakeholder engagement; (2) Broaden current assessments; (3) Place values center stage; (4) Experiment for responsiveness; (5) Monitor RRI progress; and (6) Aim for shared value.

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The concept of Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) seems to gain initial momentum. The lack of collective meaning however, results in a plethora of publications, which describe RRI from ad hoc perspectives. To provide a robust foundation for scholars and practitioners seeking to implement RRI, we aim to integrate those perspectives through a literature review. We develop a practical framework for RRI, synthesized from earlier frameworks and ideas, that can be operationalized in research and innovation practice to help make RRI more tangible for scientists and engineers. We analyze policy papers, EU project proposals, and academic articles on RRI that appeared between 2011 and 2016 to identify common qualifiers of RRI. The resulting framework integrates a set of qualifiers that are central to the concept of ‘responsive’ research and innovation. The framework also allows identification of ‘RRI shortcuts’ to be avoided. We invite scholars to investigate the applicability of this framework as a means of shifting RRI from concept to practice.

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Responsible innovation requires, among other things, that innovators reflect on the broader socio-ethical and socio-economic context of their work. This may be done by reflecting on innovation project complexity. However, tools and methods enabling relevant reflection are not abundant. In this explorative study, we investigated the effect of explicitly stimulating reflection about complexity during innovation project front-end development, using Midstream Modulation (MM) in combination with a complexity framework that distinguishes technical, organizational and external (TOE) aspects. Three project leaders in engineering and construction within the Dutch process industry interacted regularly with a critical outsider, following MM protocols, while also discussing relevant TOE aspects. Our method proves useful in supporting deliberations, and helps to broaden and deepen considerations regarding TOE aspects. The findings show the possibility and utility of enhancing reflection during early phases of innovation project management, in a way that advances both ongoing projects and responsible innovation objectives.

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Students in senior pre-university education face difficulties in the application of mathematics in physics. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study on teachers’ core beliefs about improving the transfer of algebraic skills to physics. Teachers were interviewed about their beliefs regarding a transfer problem from mathematics to physics for which solution algebraic skills were needed. We obtained large amount of data which were reduced to sixteen core beliefs including constraints and affordances influencing students’ demonstration of coherent mathematics education (CME) and transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics. These core beliefs were grouped into the five main categories ‘Collaboration’, ‘Curricula’, ‘Students’, ‘Teachers’ and ‘Textbooks’. We think that our approach to pattern coding is both elegant and generally applicable to reduce code trees including large amount of data. Four core beliefs were identified as naïve beliefs, which may impede transfer. We provided a powerful remedy against such unproductive beliefs: through professional development programs teachers with such beliefs should be made aware, reflect and reconcile their naïve beliefs with those required for transfer. These core beliefs contain data to extract teachers’ belief systems. Quantitative research could investigate to which extent this is the case and which beliefs these contain.@en

Senior pre-university education (SPE) students experience difficulties applying mathematics to physics. This paper reports the outcome of an online explorative quantitative study of teachers' belief systems about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics, conducted among 503 mathematics and physics teachers working in SPE. We used a questionnaire with 16 beliefs about improving transfer, and asked teachers to select a top 5 and distribute 50 points among them. We used agglomerative hierarchical clustering to cluster qualified SPE teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience. We found 3 large clusters, each containing naïve and desirable beliefs about transfer. These clusters turned out to be rather coherent sets of beliefs. Hence, these clusters can be interpreted as belief systems, to a certain extent justifying Ernest's [(1991). The philosophy of mathematics education. London: Falmer.] idea to cluster teachers based on their belief systems. We found relations between our groups and those of Ernest. Since naïve beliefs turn out to be weak in each cluster, science teacher educators can help science teachers to change their harmful naïve beliefs, into desirable transfer enhancing beliefs. Furthermore, we discuss some implications of our results for science teacher educators, curricula, teachers and textbooks.

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Following societal and policy pressures for responsible innovation, innovators are more and more expected to consider the broader socio-ethical context of their work, and more importantly, to integrate such considerations into their daily practices. This may require the involvement of ‘outsiders’ in innovation trajectories, including e.g. societal and governmental actors. However, methods on how to functionally organize such integration in light of responsible innovation have only recently started to emerge. We present an approach to do just that, in which we first develop value profiles of the involved actors, and second, design a workshop setting that allows innovators to develop design requirements in collaboration with representatives of parties that are not usually involved in such innovation design practices. Using a case study in automated vehicle development, we positively demonstrate the possibility and utility of our approach. We stress that in this study we wish to demonstrate the functionality of our developed method, and did not search for scientifically valid outcomes regarding this technical field.

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Recently, the notion of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has been gaining momentum in policy and practice. The main claim of RRI is that social, ethical and environmental aspects should be taken into consideration in scientific research and innovation activities. Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) is one of the first tools emerging from RRI research that is designed to help research, development and innovation actors practically implement key aspects of RRI in their daily work. Since its inception in 2006, results from multiple international studies have demonstrated the possibility and utility of STIR, albeit in developed countries. In 2015, a STIR pilot study was conducted in the developing region of Szeged, Hungary. Its results are similar, but far from those achieved in developed countries. In this paper we explore what, if any, role the innovation environment plays in the outcomes of the implementation of RRI practices such as STIR. We analyze STIR results and effectiveness in the wider context of the national innovation environments of Hungary and the Netherlands. Our findings suggest that the innovation environment can affect the success and effectiveness of approaches such as STIR. As a policy recommendation, we therefore recommend that RRI approaches such as STIR be adapted to the innovation environment of the country concerned.

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Students in senior pre-university education encounter difficulties in the application of mathematics into physics. This paper presents the outcome of an explorative qualitative study of teachers’ beliefs about improving the transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics. We interviewed 10 mathematics and 10 physics teachers using a semi-structured questionnaire that was based on an algebraic transfer problem. Almost all teachers acknowledged this transfer problem and considered it to be important. We found a continuum of teachers’ beliefs about aspects influencing transfer, including beliefs on improving this transfer. Together with identified improvement aspects about coherent mathematics education, these may help reduce physics teachers’ frustrations who spend extra time on re-teaching mathematics. Teachers think that transfer does not happen, because students see both subjects as separate disciplines. Contrary to most physics teachers, most mathematics teachers do not feel the need to collaborate with physics teachers. We found two extreme, opposite beliefs about the transfer of algebraic skills into physics. An intermediate group believes that only an integrated approach can solve the transfer problem. Some of the teachers’ beliefs could be organised into a beliefs system. Further research could investigate to which extent such beliefs systems exist and which beliefs these contain.

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Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has become an important topic in the academic community and in policy circles, but it has not yet been systematically included in the innovation process of companies. We discuss how companies can integrate RRI into their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and business strategy. To this end, we developed a conceptual model that links a company's RRI strategy to its context, and that helps to translate the RRI strategy into activities that result in RRI outcomes. We also propose a process for developing company-specific RRI key performance indicators (KPIs) that can support companies to measure RRI outcomes.

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Differences in viewpoints between science and society, like in for example the HPV-vaccination debate, should be considered from a socio-technical system perspective, and not solely from a boundary perspective between the lay public, medical doctors and scientists. Recent developments in the HPV-vaccination case show how the debate concerning uncertainty amongst scientists and the lay audience is mostly focussed on the improvement of understanding of lay people about why vaccination is important. This boundary thinking leads to the idea that once the boundary is crossed, the problem is solved. However, such ‘bug-fixing’ and technocentric boundary thinking is not leading to sustainable resolutions. We view science communication as a key aspect of the socio-technical system of scientific, technological and innovation development, in which the vaccine and its corresponding immunisation program are socially constructed. A process of construction that takes place all the way from the fuzzy front-end of their scientific conception until the marketing back-end. The authority, legitimacy and therefore the license to operate of scientists, engineers and policy makers are discussed, primarily at this boundary, but develops during the whole process of innovation. During upstream processes, professional roles and according behaviour are also defined. In this commentary we state that the development of science communication strategies should also start upstream, and that the ‘bug-fixes’ of improved listening to (and not by) the lay audience, could be become a more sustainable solution to the HPV-debate if this process of listening by experts considers the socio-technical system of vaccination as a whole. One of the outcomes might be that the dialogue between scientists, policy makers and the lay audience is about the various possible scenarios that deal with inherent scientific and societal uncertainty in which the inevitable uncertainty of science becomes more explicit. It is not known according whether this will lead to more profound interactions, however we would like to explore this possibility a bit more from an uncertain innovation process point of view. This could clear the way for a process of co-inquiry into ideas concerning shared responsibility and accountability. The latter means that the focus in the debate is more balanced and concerns the social network, and is not purely focussed on the betterment ofunderstanding by the lay audience. Moreover, in this way we consider communication and interaction between actors not as a means of crossing any boundaries (since that may be impossible), but as a means to perturb a status quo or equilibrium within a network of actors. This makes apparent boundaries more explicit and discussable. Methods of interaction, e.g. based on concepts like midstream modulation, may lead to another discourse and give way to new dynamics in this social system. @en

The overall purpose of this book is to seek cross-disciplinary insights concerning education and communication about science and technology. Reading through the chapters of this book, multiple perspectives have been explored on both science & technology education (STE) and science & technology communication (STC). If there is one such thing as an overall message, a red thread throughout the book, it is possibly that the education and communication related concepts used in the education/communication approaches, do not have exclusive value in solely either one of these two professional domains.@en