In Search of Technological Excellence: Education and Engineering in Post-war Britain

The notion that Britain was losing its international industrial competitiveness has preoccupied governments since the Second World War. Policymakers have sought to address this over the years, and yet Britain's relative industrial decline has appeared to continue, raising questions about its root causes.

In Search of Technological Excellence analyses the policymaking and policy implementation in the education of engineers and technologists from the 1945 report of the Percy Committee on Higher Technological Education to the conclusion of the Thatcher government's Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative. Using a plethora of previously unpublished sources, this book focuses on the untold story of what the reports of the three key committees in this fifty-year period - Percy (1945), Fielden (1963) and Finniston (1980) - actually achieved in secondary and higher technological education. The core themes of this volume include industrial training and its assessment, the controversy over the structure of industrial sandwich courses, the perceived requirements for qualified specialists (the 'manpower' controversy), curriculum development, creativity and innovation in engineering, engineers as managers, and engineering in schools.

Thought-provoking and comprehensive, In Search of Technological Excellence reflects on perennial problems to help clarify how this history can inform policymaking today and will be of interest to policymakers, practitioners and students in engineering education and public administration.

John Heywood, Professorial Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College Dublin

John Heywood is a Professorial Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin. He was given the best research publication award of the Division for the Professions of the American Educational Research Association for Engineering Education: Research and Development in the Curriculum and Instruction in 2006. Previous studies among his 150 publications have included Learning, Adaptability and Change and The Challenge for Education and Industry, and co-authored Analysing Jobs, a Study of Engineers at Work. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Engineers of Ireland. In 2016 he received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award from the Pope for his services to education. In 2018 the TELPhE Division awarded him the best publication award and a meritorious award.