Enhancing Leadership Pedagogy Within Engineering Education : A Course Example

In recent years, work-life skills such as leadership, self-management, teamwork, and ethics have become increasingly integral to the engineering profession. However, it appears that traditional engineering education often falls short in equipping students with these essential skills. The development of social skills is fundamentally experiential and encompasses the entirety of an individual. In this paper, we introduce elements of impactful leadership pedagogy derived from our research and extensive practical experience in delivering (critical) leadership courses to engineering students. We engage students in a processual and contextual examination of leadership concepts, theories, and phenomena, while placing paramount importance on personal inquiry into their own thinking and agency regarding leadership, influence and moral agency. Student feedback indicates that learning experiences have been transformative, for some, even life-changing.