Implications of the Sociotechnical Turn in Engineering Curricula for Tutoring Practices, the Tutor Role and Tutor Training

Research Paper Recommended citation: Shaw, C. B., Govender, S., Kloot, B., Karassellos, L., & Padayachee, P. (2025). Implications of the Sociotechnical Turn in Engineering Curricula for Tutoring Practices, the Tutor Role and Tutor Training. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631674. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. IMPLICATIONS OF THE SOCIOTECHNICAL TURN IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR TUTORING PRACTICES, TUTOR IDENTITIES AND TUTOR TRAINING C Shaw a,1, Shanali Govender b, Bruce Kloot c, L Karassellos d, P Padayacheee a Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 0000-0002-9868-277X bCentre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 0000-0002-9414-9476 c Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 0000-0001-8644-3248 d Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 0000-0001-9943-4391 e Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 0000-0001-9966-8171 Conference Key Areas: Dialogue between engineering and society – effects on education; Building the capacity and strengthening the educational competences of engineering educators. Keywords: Tutor Development; Socio-technical Engineering Education, Interdisciplinary Learning, Collaborative Autoethnography. ABSTRACT Engineering education has traditionally focused on content mastery, problem-solving techniques, and applied technical skills. In light of this, tutorial sessions have been positioned as sites for conceptual and technical consolidation, framing tutors as disciplinary experts with tutor training tending to assume conceptual knowledge and problem-solving skill and focusing basic group management and administrative processes. However, recent shifts in engineering education - the sociotechnical turn - challenge these conventional assumptions. This paper explores how a course, ‘Engineer in Society’, which focuses on the political, environmental and social context of engineering activity, offers a fresh perspective on changing tutoring practices. We established a research collective, bringing together perspective and interview data from discipline-based lecturers and data from an institutional tutor development programme (TDP) to explore how shifts towards sociotechnical engineering education transform tutoring practices, and what the implications of this are for tutor identities and development. Integrating a collaborative autoethnographic approach and collective method approach, we found changes in tutoring practices, including tutor recruitment, 1 C Shaw [email protected] pedagogic practices in tutorials, and tutorial assessments, combined with changing student perceptions had implications for tutors’ identities. Our findings highlight the tensions in tutor identity and reveal gaps in conventional tutor training in engineering. The findings from this case suggest that in response to the sociotechnical turn in engineering education, tutoring practices such as recruitment must change and tutor development must extend beyond technical proficiency to encompass pedagogical skills, interdisciplinary communication, feedback literacy, and socio-emotional support. 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 The sociotechnical turn in engineering curricula and courses Martin and Polmear (2023) describe engineering culture as "built on depoliticization and technical prioritization" (p.134). Yet there is increasing pressure to include nontechnical knowledge and competencies in undergraduate engineering curricula to better prepare graduates to navigate multifaceted real-world problems and contribute to society. These efforts have evolved over decades (e.g. Allie et al., 2009), driven largely by accreditation bodies such as the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) and the International Engineering Alliance (IEA). 'Non-technical' curricula content includes trans-and interdisciplinary knowledge areas, such as sustainability, ethics, and professional communication. In South Africa, ECSA requires that students in accredited engineering programs meet eleven Graduate Attributes (GAs) focused on solving complex problems, with some specifying socio-technical aspects reflecting the evolving demands of the engineering profession. For example, GA7 refers to the engineer and the world; GA8 refers to individual and collaborative teamwork; and GA10 refers to engineering professionalism and includes professional ethics. The integration of sociotechnical thinking in engineering education encourages students to consider the interplay between social and technical factors as both engineering students and future professionals. This holistic approach is essential for addressing complex engineering challenges with significant societal impacts and understanding ethical, environmental, and economic implications of engineering decisions. However, sociotechnical integration is a complex task (Christensen & Ernø-Kjølhede; Andrade & Tomblin, 2018) with multiple interpretations informing framing and application within curricula (Ming, et.al., 2025). Decisions regarding socio-technical engineering curriculum have implications for all involved in the teaching and learning process. 1.2 Tutoring, tutorials and tutor development: A focus on tutoring in engineering In relation to South African higher education, tutoring is often researched in relation to the imperative to widen access to education, to support equitable access to and outcomes from higher education for a diverse cohort of students. The tutorial system is positioned as a response to large class sizes in resource-constrained environments, concomitantly high student-staff ratios, and the challenge of responsive learning demands (Ayaya, 2015; Pather et al., 2020; Hassan, 2022). Tutors’ roles have typically included a knowledge role, a social role and an organisational role (Berge, 1995). In contrast, engineering education has traditionally emphasized content mastery, problemsolving techniques, and applied technical skills, with tutorial sessions serving primarily as spaces for technical consolidation led by tutors as content guides. Consequently, tutor training has focused on enhancing subject knowledge, basic facilitation, and problem-solving techniques rather than fostering broader learning facilitation. However, recent shifts in engineering education—driven by an increased emphasis on interdisciplinary, collaborative, and reflective learning— challenge these conventional assumptions. In addition, as access to higher education has grown and funding becomes more limited, tutors have increasingly been used to support student learning and throughput (Clarence, 2016). More recent research argues that tutor roles may include facilitating student learning (Versfeld et al, 2025), conveying technical expertise or disciplinary knowledge (Ballesteros et al, 2021), offering psychosocial support (Chadha et al, 2021) and modelling positive student outcomes (Da Re et al, 2023; Brown & Poor, 2010). 1.3 Research focus This paper explores how a course, ‘Engineer in Society’, offers a site for the exploration of how shifting tutoring practices influence tutor identities and, the implications of this for tutor training and development. To achieve this, we brought together two groups of staff – disciplinary lecturers and staff from an institutional tutor development programme (TDP) to reflect on tutoring practices and tutor roles and identities. Inspired by collaborative autoethnographic and collective method approaches, we explore changing tutoring practices by comparing tutoring practices in the course to tutor practices and experiences in the broader faculty context. This study asks the following research question: How do shifts towards sociotechnical engineering education influence tutoring practice, and what are the implications of this for tutor identities and tutor training and development? This work contributes to ongoing discussions on the role of tutoring and the development of tutors within engineering education and the broader higher education landscape. 1.4 Description of the course ‘Engineer in Society’ is a whole-year core course offered at third-year level in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The content of the course is designated as ‘complementary studies’ according to the ECSA framework. The name of the course is taken from a seminal book on the topic (Mills, 1948) and is based on the idea of the engineer ‘looking outward’ to society to consider four interlinked facets: human society, the biophysical environment, economic systems, and political structures. Although the course deals with these four facets sequentially, it continuously emphasises the relationships between them, and relevance to engineering. In order to stimulate student reflection on the deeper significance of the role of engineering in relation to the various facets of society, some loaded and provocative topics are chosen. The intention is to highlight the messiness of social knowledge and to ensure that students realise that there are different perspectives on the complex topics raised – that there is no single ‘right answer’, as students often expect in technical subjects. For example, students are shown some of the greatest engineering achievements under apartheid (SAIMechE, 1993) and in the following lecture how some of these achievements supported the apartheid state. Students are then asked whether they think engineers in South Africa have ‘blood on their hands’ for their role under apartheid (see Shaw & Kloot, 2024). Another example is the topic of climate change which is approached using the framework of Hulme’s (2009) book ‘Why we disagree about Climate Change’. In taking this approach, the course provides counter narratives to dominant mainstream perspectives and draws on sophisticated, critical student perspectives (Shaw & Kloot, 2023). A third example is a topic that, at the time of writing, is being prepared and will be presented by one of the tutors. Entitled ‘Technopolitics and the nuclear age’, it considers how the engineering behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons intersects with political structures in the post-Cold War era. It can be challenging for students to grasp what is being required in the course, given that they are accustomed to solving problems from a given set of equations, formulating a technical designs and/or memorising content for recall. The tutors provide important support for students as they grapple with new ways of thinking, constructing arguments and appreciating different perspectives, including those with which they might disagree. As described below, this often takes shape as students write essays and receive, process and integrate critical (in both senses) feedback provided by the tutors. 2 METHODOLOGY This paper draws on the practices of collective research (Pardee, et.al.,2018) by constituting a research collective, bringing together two related by separate data sets, and analysing these through a process of discussion and written reflection. 2.1 Establishing a research collective Two of the authors brought the connection to a course in Mechanical Engineering and a third author offered a connection to the Tutor Development Project (TDP) at UCT, bringing along two colleagues from the TDP. The disciplinary lecturers codesigned and teach on ‘Engineer in Society’. The TDP team’ is working on a project to support the development of tutors, offering development, support, and resources to equip tutors for their vital role in contributing to students’ learning experiences. 2.2 Collecting data We drew on collaborative autoethnography (CAE) as a qualitative research method that combines personal narrative with collective reflection to explore lived experiences (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2016). CAE involves multiple researchers engaging in shared storytelling, dialogue, and critical analysis of their own experiences in relation to broader cultural, social, or institutional contexts. By weaving together individual voices and perspectives, CAE fosters deeper reflexivity and challenges dominant narratives, making it particularly useful for examining issues of identity, power, and social change (Chang et al., 2016). Given the varied perspectives the authors brought to the engagement, in their roles as course-designers, lecturers, tutor trainers and researchers, CAE provided a valuable framework to weave together our varied experiences. Having completed a series of pilot development sessions across the university, the TDP team brought to this inquiry a familiarity with the scholarship around tutors and tutoring practices, and data from tutor interviews and tutor induction sessions, for example, we explored tutors’ conceptualisations of the role of the tutor by providing six descriptors for tutors to rank in order of importance, using a digital, anonymous audience response system. One of the TDP colleagues conducted two semistructured interviews, one with each of the disciplinary collaborators which formed part of the data. 2.3 Knowledge generation through collective, iterative reflection This paper draws on two well established knowledge generation practices in education research: writing as inquiry (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005) and collective investigation (Pardee et al, 2018). Both these approaches process collective, iterative reflection and collective writing as a process of knowledge production and treat writing not only as a tool for recording knowledge but as a generative process that actively shapes knowledge and understanding (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005). Rooted in postmodern and feminist epistemologies, these approaches see knowledge generation through writing as an emergent and iterative practice through which insights are constructed rather than simply reported. Researchers engage in writing as an exploratory act, allowing meaning to evolve through drafting, revising, and dialoguing with texts and ideas (Richardson, 2000). These processes formed the core of our analytical process. In the case of this paper, while the authors almost all know each other through our daily work, this was for some of us the first time we had written together. Seeing the writing as a “making sense together” process from varied perspectives allowed us to look at a shared area of interest to discover through spoken dialogue and written text, implications for tutoring development in the UCT context. 3 FINDINGS This section describes four significant themes that emerged in relation to the current tutoring practices in the course, pointing to shifts that result from the sociotechnical nature of this course’s curriculum. We then connected these to data collected during pilot faculty-wide training sessions and the reflections of the TDP team on these sessions. 3.1 Tutoring practices in the course Recruiting tutors in the course The interdisciplinary nature of the course required a customised approach to tutor recruitment and selection. Tutors ideally should have an interdisciplinary background and knowledge across various disciplines. Ideally, they should also have experience with academic essay writing with which most engineering students at this point are not familiar. Academic transcripts are also considered in selection. The recruitment and selection of tutors has oftentimes relied on referrals and has been serendipitous, rather than outlining a strategy from the outset. Tutors are also given a good deal of autonomy in how they choose to engage with students, manage marking queries, other questions, etc. Interestingly, the tutoring cohort on the course has been primarily women, in what has historically been a male-dominated field. Aligning pedagogic strategy with values in the curriculum This course requires a paradigm shift, encouraging students to explore the social, political, and ethical dimensions of engineering. As they develop a more complex and nuanced understanding of the field, tutors play a crucial role in scaffolding this transition. In doing so, tutors not only support students but also help reshape perceptions of engineering within the department, institution, and broader profession. The teaching team embodies the course’s values through its pedagogical approaches, fostering a culture of care, inclusivity, and collaboration. Rather than explicitly instructing tutors on these principles, the course convenors model them in practice, emphasizing respect for students’ diverse perspectives and encouraging active participation. However, challenges have arisen with tutors who approach the role solely as a source of income, without genuine investment in student development. Addressing this remains an ongoing priority. Tutoring for unfamiliar forms of assessment In Engineer in Society, students are assessed primarily through essay writing—an unfamiliar format for many in their programs. To support their development of these new academic literacies, tutors are often selected from outside the Engineering Faculty, particularly from humanities, social sciences, or interdisciplinary fields such as engineering education and biomedical engineering. Their diverse backgrounds help students move beyond a strictly engineering mindset, encouraging engagement with different ontological and epistemological perspectives, including alternatives to positivist approaches. Each tutor is assigned a group of students, allowing tutors to track individual progress. They provide feedback on essay drafts, to support students' argument development. Tutoring in the course in light of student perceptions Despite departmental endorsement, some students perceive this course as unrelated to "real" engineering, associating it more with humanities or life orientation subjects. Accustomed to a quantitative, problem-solving framework, they may resist engaging with social, political, and ethical issues, which challenge their academic identity and notions of valid, scientific knowledge. For some, essay-based assessment feels unsettling, and frustration can surface in jokes about choosing engineering to avoid writing. However, tutors recognize that this resistance often stems from vulnerability, as students confront unfamiliar ways of thinking that may seem at odds with their technical expertise. These competing discourses about engineering education require tutors to actively address student concerns and foster attitude change. 3.2 Current tutoring practices in the faculty In the following section, we connect and compare the disciplinary lecturers' reflections about tutors and tutoring practices in this course to the TDP team’s reflections of tutoring practices in the faculty, and to data collected from tutors during faculty development sessions. Recruiting tutors Recruiting tutors for this course seems to be different from much of the rest of the faculty, and perhaps more akin to what might happen in the faculty of Humanities at UCT. During a tutor development session, while in discussions about the role of tutors, tutors asserted that the recruitment process focused solely on tutors’ academic standing. They described the application process, noting that the only information that they had to submit was their academic transcript detailing their academic performance. In conversation with disciplinary lecturers, it became clear that in the Engineer in Society course, tutors were selected and valued for bringing “different ontological and epistemological perspectives” to tutor-tutee interactions. While tutors in undergraduate programmes in Engineering at UCT have, historically, been recruited from the engineering or science postgraduate student cohort, the tutors for this course come from diverse departments outside of the Engineering faculty. Pedagogic practices in tutorial The interviews with the teaching team and data gathered from tutors during training suggest that pedagogic practices in tutorials vary significantly across the faculty. In 'Engineer in Society', the tutor role is multifaceted – tutors must have sophisticated understanding of disciplinary content and pedagogical knowledge in how to most effectively support students' learning. This course adopts an expanded version of the tutor role, with strong emphasis on pedagogic practice in tutorials. In interviews, the teaching team described tutor training within departments as focusing on "people-management" and facilitation of behaviours that support learning, describing elements of the training as "transactional", specifically relating to assessment and administration. Engagements with tutors in faculty training reflected tutors' perspectives on emergent dimensions of the tutor role. Tutors strongly signalled a focus on knowledge as a key part of the tutor role, rather than pedagogic strategies for tutoring. Tutors' disciplinary knowledge is valued at the expense of other aspects of their tutoring practice, with little emphasis given to their capacity to draw on disciplinary specific pedagogic strategies to mediate student learning. The literature suggests that tutoring training and development is often centralised and delegated, leading to lack of attention to disciplinary specific pedagogic strategies (Mhakure 2019; 2018). Tutors and assessment in the faculty As part of faculty engagements, tutors were given six descriptors to rank in order of importance: the tutor as a disciplinary expert; the tutor as learning expert; the tutor as facilitator of groups; the tutor as assessor; the tutor as guide to higher education experience and the tutor as guide to experience of being a young adult/ young professional. Consistently, the tutor as assessor co-ranked as a role which was awarded the least attention in tutoring practices, and in tutor training. During a senior tutor training session, tutors signalled two positions on the role of tutor in relation to assessment. The first group argued that the role of the tutors is to help students to “pass the exam”, through offering strategies and “tricks” to examination success. The second group argued that a tutors’ role was to focus on student learning and on assessment literacies, so that students did not have to “game” the examination, viewing it as a culmination of a learning process. In ‘Engineer in Society’, the tutor role is multifaceted and has a strong emphasis on the tutor as assessor and as guide to assessment, with tutors teaching academic literacy sessions that support students’ assessment submissions. Tutors are seen as guides to assessment, through unpacking tacit practices in the tutorial space. Tutoring in the faculty in light of student perceptions Tutors in the faculty training signalled that students’ perceptions of courses, the discipline, lecturers and even tutors themselves impacted strongly on their tutor practices. For example, students have a strong perception of tutors as “knowers”, with the responsibility to “transfer” this knowledge to the student. If tutors engage in active learning practices and dialogic learning practices, they sometimes face resistance from students who, coming from transmissive education cultures, would prefer to be given “the right answer”. Additionally, tutors indicated that students’ assumptions about tutors as individuals resulted in unequal patterns of engagement, with students preferring to engage or not engage with tutors for a wide variety of productive and problematic reasons. This leads to some tutors being overworked in large sessions, while others were relatively under-utilised, which consequently impacts on tutors’ sense of value and development. 4 DISCUSSION In the findings above we have described how tutoring practices, such as recruitment, pedagogy, and assessment, have shifted in response to the sociotechnical turn in engineering education. Tutoring practices, shaped by the above factors, have implications for tutor identities and subsequently training, discussed in this section. 4.1 Shifting Tutor Identities The notion of identity can be a useful tool for thinking about tutor development. As already noted, tutor training in the faculty is minimal and tends to be transactional, limiting the development of a tutor identity to that of more knowledgeable peer. This has two significant implications for the tutor identity – the tutor is a “watered-down” version of ideal knower, and the tutor-tutee relationship is reduced to the transferring of information. Furthermore, engagement with tutors and lecturers highlighted tensions in the conceptualisations of the tutor identity – tutor as expert vs tutor as peer, tutor as answer provider vs tutor as support for student learning, tutor as academic support vs tutor as holistic support. Reconceptualising training as an opportunity for a tutor to develop a more considered and integrated professional identity that extends the technically rigid identify (Martin & Polmear, 2023) has the potential to address both these harms. Needham and Lowe (2007) make the link between reflective practice in tutors’ work and the development of their professional identities, and others also emphasize the importance of reflexivity in this role and the need to create spaces to foster critical reflection on practice (Conradie, 2022; Cupido et al., 2022; Sithole, 2024). In this vein, TDP training and development interventions emphasize not only the role and duties of a tutor, but also the identity of the tutor, providing a reflective space to grapple with this concept. 4.2 Implications for tutor training Tutor training and development in the engineering faculty at UCT is not centralised at the faculty level, resulting in variation in the focus and scope of tutor training and development activities. The department of Mechanical Engineering has an annual introductory training workshop compulsory for newly appointed tutors, with a few courses such as 'Engineer in Society' offering additional, course-specific training when deemed necessary by the convener. The sociotechnical turn in engineering education requires reflection on existing tutoring practices, how these shape tutor identities and the implications of this for tutor training and development activities. The 'Engineer in Society' course serves as a compelling example of this, recruiting tutors with unique and specialised interdisciplinary backgrounds. Tutors in this course must engage in relatively complex practices: guiding students in tutorial tasks, providing formative and developmental feedback on their writing, helping them navigate topics that could be emotionally difficult, challenging them to take on critical perspectives, supporting mindset shifts about the nature of the engineering field, and being a first port of call for students. While tutoring in this course presents particular complexities, tutors in more technical courses are increasingly encountering students who require more holistic and intensive support. It is critical that tutor training and development supports tutor development beyond technical proficiency, to include critical pedagogical competencies, interdisciplinary communication skills, feedback literacy, and socio-emotional support capabilities. Additionally, faculties and the institution must construct a policy environment that informs and supports responsive tutor selection and development and offers guidelines that shape tutor training practices to avoid variation based on resourcing and staff capacity. 5 CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that the paradigm shift from programs that reinforce a depoliticization engineering culture with technical prioritization (Martin & Polmear, 2023) towards sociotechnical engineering education demands a fundamental transformation in tutoring practice, tutor identity, and tutor development. As engineering curricula increasingly incorporate socio-cultural dimensions, tutors must evolve beyond their traditional role as technical knowledge transmitters to become facilitators of critical thinking, providers of holistic student support, and guides for professional identity development. The minimal, transactional nature of current tutor training is insufficient for these expanded responsibilities. Instead, institutions must implement comprehensive development programs that foster reflective practice, enable tutors to grapple with their professional identity, and equip them with the pedagogical, emotional, and interdisciplinary competencies required in contemporary engineering education. Without such transformation, both student learning outcomes and tutor professional development will be compromised, ultimately undermining the goals of sociotechnical engineering education. REFERENCES Allie, S., Armien, M. N., Burgoyne, N., Case, J. M., Collier-Reed, B. I., Craig, T., Deacon, A., Fraser, D. M., Geyer, Z., Jacobs, C., Jawitz, J., Kloot, B., Kotta, L., Langdon, G., Roux, K. L., Marshall, D., Mogashana, D., Shaw, C., Sheridan, G., & Wolmarans, N. (2009). 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