ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces socio-technical systems (STSs) and the implications these hold for engineering and design education. The chapter sets out the theory, background and framework through which the remainder of this book should be understood. STS constitutes a site in which engineering and design take place. The chapter details how STSs should be managed, from an engineering education perspective, and how STS projects allow new opportunities for education and innovation in engineering and design practice. STS are broad, multidisciplinary and complex, with significant implications for practice and education. The origin of this perspective that is applicable to engineering and technology lies with the Tavistock Institute and in ecology, and it has led to social studies of science that form much of the current perspective on STS. This perspective sees the social not as a self-standing realm of study, but as something that permeates the technical, ecological, political, economic and cultural and, in fact, binds them together in the STS. The chapter describes how interdisciplinary practices should commence and what studies of STS should highlight and concludes by describing how engineering and design education will change.