Mode 2 knowledge and institutional life: taking Gibbons on a walk through a South African university

Abstract

This paper examines the response of a black university in South Africa to the challenges posed by the mode 2 knowledge thesis of Michael Gibbon. The case material is based on the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Durban Westville, which in the period 1999 - 2000 grappled with the implications of Gibbon's thesis for knowledge, inquiry and professional identity in a proposed university-industry partnership. The author argues that entrenched institutional rules and behaviours threaten to undermine any attempt to rethink the research and practice of engineering education even when such restructuring appears to work in the best interest of students.