Learning Engineering Knowledge and Creativity by Solving Projects

Recent studies have argued the increasing complexity of engineering practice brings challenges to engineers. Creativity has been thought as one necessary element in engineering education. And to let students work with project work has been regarded as a good strategy of developing creativity. However, the literature shows studies on engineering education, most previous efforts take a departure of psychological perspective to discuss developing creative skills through project work; there is a lack of discussion on how project work supports achieving new knowledge and creativity in a social theory framework. Therefore, this paper aims to answer this lack and provide a literature review by focusing on three questions: 1) Which kinds of knowledge are needed for engineering students? 2) What are relationships between knowledge, learning and creativity? And 3) why does a solving project context support creativity and learning? Based on answering the three questions, the literature review underpins the needs of developing creativity in engineering education and strengths of solving project context in stimulating creativity and learning. So this paper contributes to future studies and practical strategies of fostering creative engineers.