Teaching professional skills in engineering programmes: The academic perspective: A plan for using Phenomenography to explore academic conceptions of their role in developing professional skills in engineering students

Engineering graduates in today's world face a global industry where professional skills are as important as the intellectual prowess gained by obtaining a degree itself. The importance of these skills is abundant in literature, yet so too is an ongoing barrage from industry that Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) are not developing sufficient professional skills within students [1]. This occurs against a background of accrediting bodies who have adopted programme outcomes which require employability/professional skills to be integrated into the curriculum. There is also evidence that many educators have attempted to employ innovative strategies, such as Problem Based Learning to expose students to opportunities to practice these skills. Why therefore, is there still a gap between what industry wants and what HEIs provide and whose fault is it? Industry may be demanding more than an academic can deliver, in an already overcrowded curriculum with dwindling funding, particularly in an Irish context [2-3]. To close the gap, academics may need to expose students to professional skills in every module. This paper proposes a research study to explore how academics conceptualise their role in developing professional skills in engineering students.