Learning engineers to reflect: Obstacles and remedies in an engineering community

The article reports results from a research facilitated learning project carried out in an engineering department in an oil and gas company. The objective of the project was to enhance an awareness of and the ability to use, dialogue and reflection-based learning approaches. The results document that the project-based engineering setting induces structural, organisational, and cultural obstacles to learning. Obstacles may come in the forms of a disciplinebased organisation, employee turnover, time pressure, insufficient management involvement, lack of commitment, conflicting reifications, and an overstated belief in codification. Remedies for some of these obstacles have been to create spaces in the engineering setting for multi-disciplinary discussions, for reflection and common understanding of procedures and cases, in facilitated learning sessions and case study sessions.