Making the implicit explicit: operationalising occurrences of cognitive development in a postgraduate engineering Community of Practice

Abstract

Rapidly evolving technological markets in the so-called knowledge economy have resulted in increased pressure on postgraduate (PG) engineering cohorts to produce research outputs that meet the disparate requirements of both Higher Education (HE) and the knowledge economy. The latter expects a product that is not always explicitly linked to the process required by HE. This paper offers an approach to bridging this tension by operationalising the implicit knowledge-building process through the observation of how cognitive development occurs within a PG Community of Practice in Renewable Energy studies. Drawing on sociocultural and practice-based innovation theories, a translation device has been constructed that attempts to articulate the process-product features of an engineering PG cohort across 35 online seminar recordings. The analysis suggests that cognitive development is scaffolded through discursive engagement between industry and academic participants at different study levels, who intuitively recognise gaps within the research process-product domains and collaboratively overcome these.

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