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EOI
28,1 Disciplinary cultures in
mechanical engineering and
materials science
24
Gendered/gendering practices?
Anne-Françoise Gilbert
Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of Bern,
Bern, Switzerland

Abstract
Purpose – The paper raises the question of a persisting masculine dominance in engineering
disciplines and the reasons behind it. Rather than addressing gender-specific socialisation as a cause of
the under-representation of women in engineering education, it aims to focus on the social and cultural
practices of engineering itself, asking to what extent these practices are gendered and/or gendering.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two
departments at a technical university in Switzerland: mechanical engineering and materials science.
An exemplary piece of field data is analysed in order to generate relevant concepts for characterising
and contrasting cultures in engineering disciplines. Results are discussed in the framework of
Bourdieu’s theory of the scientific field.
Findings – Group culture in materials science values individuality and plurality, hence leaving more
scope for gender diversity; group culture in mechanical engineering values the subordination of
individual needs to group norms and tends to reproduce features of homosocial male worlds. The
results support the hypothesis that disciplinary cultures in engineering are gendered and have a
gendering effect of their own.
Research limitations/implications – Case studies in other disciplines and national contexts are
needed to broaden the empirical basis of the argument.
Practical implications – Policies to achieve gender balance in higher education should not only aim
at supporting women, but also at changing disciplinary cultures.
Originality/value – The paper presents a shift of focus from women’s socialisation to gendering
practices in engineering disciplines.
Keywords Culture, Gender, Mechanical engineering, Higher education, Switzerland
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In Western countries, engineering disciplines have been a predominantly male area of
education since their institutionalisation as fields of higher education in the nineteenth
century. The number of women in these fields started to grow substantially only after
the Second World War, although the situation varies along national and disciplinary
lines. Moreover, efforts made in recent years to attract more women to these traditionally
male areas have proved to be relatively unsuccessful. This situation raises the question
Equal Opportunities International of the reasons for the persisting masculine dominance in specific areas of engineering.
Vol. 28 No. 1, 2009
pp. 24-35 Until recently, female under-representation in engineering has mainly been addressed
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0261-0159
in terms of the position of women in traditionally male fields and from the perspective of
DOI 10.1108/02610150910933613 the best practices to support women in these environments. In the last few years,
however, a new line of research has developed in science and technology studies, shifting Disciplinary
the focus to the construction of masculinity and emphasising the mutual shaping of cultures in
technology and gender (Faulkner, 2000; Henwood, 1998, 2000; Lohan and Faulkner, 2004;
Paulitz, 2007). While programs designed to encourage women to enter traditionally male engineering
fields think of the problem in terms of gender-specific socialisation, this new perspective
focuses on the practices and cultures of engineering itself and raises the following issue:
how are social and cultural practices, images and identities in a particular field linked to 25
specific aspects of masculinity and, therefore, contributing to the reproduction of gender
segregation in the field?
Following this line of thought, the present paper deals with the culture of
engineering in the context of academic institutions, with particular reference to the
Swiss case. The study of academic disciplines has attracted some attention in the past,
and scholars have emphasised the diversity of academic cultures and their relevance to
the process of becoming a member of a given community (Becher, 1989; Clark, 1997;
Krais, 1996). While the gendered dimension of academia as a whole has widely been
acknowledged, this point has received little attention in relation to specific disciplinary
cultures (Beaufaÿs, 2003; Heintz et al., 2004). On the other hand, studies of gender and
engineering have focused primarily on workplace cultures (Faulkner, 2007; Mellström,
1995; Robinson and Mcillwee, 1991) and little attention has been paid so far to
engineering cultures in the academic context (Tonso, 1999). This paper is an attempt to
fill the gap. It is part of a larger body of research addressing the following questions:
.
To what extent are social and epistemic practices and identities in engineering
disciplines gendered and/or gendering?
. How do different disciplinary contexts influence the gendering of practices and
identities[1]?

These questions have been investigated by comparing two engineering departments at

a technical university in Switzerland, namely mechanical engineering and materials
science. In the last decades, the number of women studying engineering has increased
continually. However, it still varies notably between different areas of the field. Some
disciplines continue to resist feminisation, such as electrical engineering and
mechanical engineering, with a rate of female students below 10 per cent. In contrast,
other disciplines have experienced a quick rise in female representation in the last 15
years and show a proportion of over 30 per cent of female students; this is the case in
both environmental engineering and materials science. How do these differences come
about? By comparing the rather classic field of mechanical engineering with the
relatively new field of materials science, I concentrate on a small but hopefully
productive contrast between different engineering cultures in academia.
My paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in those two departments.
Ethnography has proved to be a sound method for the analysis of local cultures in
varying institutional contexts (Geertz, 1993) and has been used for the investigation of
the academic field (Beaufaÿs, 2003; Heintz et al., 2004) as well as the engineering
profession (Faulkner, 2007; Mellström, 1995; Tonso, 1999). The aim of ethnographic
fieldwork is to gather first-hand information on the practices of a particular
community; this is done by observing people carrying out their everyday activities and
interviewing them (Spradley, 1979, 1980). The personal exposure of the ethnographer
EOI to a “foreign” culture allows him or her to disclose aspects of the culture that are
28,1 self-evident to insiders. For this research, data collection was carried out in 2006 and
2007. I spent one term in each of the selected research units doing participant
observation, attending formal and informal meetings in the unit and conducting
interviews with professors and doctoral students.
Of the numerous relevant questions that could be addressed, this paper focuses on
26 the following aspect: the importance of the group as a social unit in engineering
departments and its influence in shaping social life. The paper starts by describing the
common elements of group organisation and culture in both disciplines; then, some of
the striking differences in social and cultural practices between mechanical
engineering and materials science are highlighted on the grounds of an exemplary
analysis of field data. In the final sections, I will suggest a theoretical framework that
might explain these differences and draw some conclusions on the question of
gendering in these findings.

Common elements of group cultures in engineering disciplines

In academic engineering as well as in the sciences, institutions are subdivided into
research units, often called laboratories. These institutional units include one or more
groups, each of them headed by a professor. The group represents the relevant
institutional entity for the organisation of research as a professional activity. This type
of organisation differs to some extent from the organisation of scientific work in the
humanities and social sciences, and therefore, in this section, some basic features of the
group organisation and culture are addressed that hold true for both disciplinary
contexts.

The group as a social unit

To a visitor in the buildings of an engineering department, unfamiliar as I was with the
localities and trying to orient myself, the group as a social unit was demonstrated at
first sight. Actually, in the corridors of the department, the groups present themselves
either on a poster or in a showcase. These presentations usually portray each member
of the group including a photograph, his or her name, status and room number. The
head of group, the professor, figures on the upper left side of the poster or showcase,
followed by the senior scientists, the administrative and technical staff, the postdocs
and, finally, the PhD students. Besides the obvious practical function of providing
information for visitors, these self-presentations give us a first glance on some relevant
categories in the field of observation:
.
Symbolically, the group is represented as a unit. The posters and showcases
demonstrate who belongs to a particular group and who does not.
.
The distribution of individuals in these visual presentations directly reflects
status differences and the internal hierarchy of the group.

Thus, the self-presentation of the group is characterised by a tension between equality

on the one hand, each member of the group being represented on the same terms, and
hierarchy on the other hand, the ranking of the group members according to their
status in the scientific field being emphasised.
Organisation of scientific work Disciplinary
The basic function of the group is its role as a research unit. From a sociology of cultures in
science perspective, scientific research is to be considered as work like any other form
of work (Whitley, 1982). Thus, one of the purposes of my field investigation was to find engineering
out how research activities are organised in the groups I observed. The following
points proved to be typical of the organisation of research activities in engineering (and
the sciences) in contrast to humanities and social sciences. 27
Research agenda. The topics investigated in a particular unit are defined by the
research agenda of the head of the group. Thus, the professor or his/her senior
scientists outline research projects. An appropriate candidate is then selected to fill the
position as a PhD student. In some contrast to the social sciences and humanities,
engineering is therefore characterised by a top-down approach to research.
Employment. To do research is considered a professional activity and doctoral
students are treated as trainees. Hence, PhD students are always employed, usually on
the basis of a three-year contract, and they are normally expected to complete their
dissertation in this time span. The process of qualification for research in engineering
is thus professionalised to a larger extent than in the social sciences.
Supervision. The work of the PhD students is closely supervised by a postdoc, a
senior scientist, or even directly by the head of the group. Meetings occur on a weekly
basis with the direct supervisor to discuss ongoing problems and ensure work
progress. In the case of a bigger group, a professor meets with each PhD student and
his/her direct supervisor every few weeks. Following the top-down approach, research
is carried out in line with the overall agenda of the group.
Specialisation. The research topics treated by doctoral students are highly
specialised; they are closely related to the work of their direct supervisor and to the
findings of previous doctoral students in the group, thus showing a high degree of
division of labour. In line with this principle, PhD students cut out and define small
problems from their own research and supervise the corresponding work of graduate
students for their bachelor thesis or term’s work, thereby participating in the top-down
training process.
From this brief outline of internal organisation in an engineering research group,
two aspects seem particularly significant:
(1) research organisation in engineering is characterised by specialisation and a
hierarchical division of labour – therefore it reproduces, or rather, it preproduces
one of the key structural features of the labour market; and
(2) the initiation to the standards of scientific work – the transmission of implicit
knowledge – occurs in a one-to-one relationship with a person of the next status
position in terms of standards of the scientific field.

Both aspects are likely to have gender-specific implications that would need further
elaboration, but can only be sketched out in this paper. The first point refers to the
structural proximity of engineering education and research to the domain of industrial
production and suggests that there might be structural similarities between both fields
(Gilbert, 2008). In several contributions to the study of the labour market, authors have
argued that organisational structures are not gender-neutral (Acker, 1990; Cockburn,
1985). In fact, organisations rely on underlying assumptions of gender and a gender
EOI division of labour, assuming, for example, a (male) worker doing a full-time, lifelong
28,1 job and being supported by a woman in his private and domestic life.
The second point refers to the pedagogical relationship between trainer and trainee
and to the process of initiation into the scientific community. While this relationship is
hierarchical in nature, it also implies processes of identification and mutual recognition
between trainer and trainee, based on the fact that the trainee can expect to become a
28 full member of the community in the future. However, the structure of mutual
recognition underpinning this relationship is originally rooted in the homosocial male
community. As a consequence, it still proves difficult for women to be accepted as
equals in this game (Krais, 2000).

A strong form of group life

Having discussed the way the group presents itself as a social unit to the outside world
and sketched out some features of the internal organisation of research, I will now
address the informal part of the group’s social organisation – its social life.
In both units observed, in mechanical engineering as well as in materials science,
what I call a strong form of group life was practised. This means that, besides regular
scientific group meetings, a range of informal activities took place in the group,
including the following:
.
daily routines such as gathering for lunch or for the coffee break;
.
special all-group events like the summer party or the Christmas party;
.
a yearly group seminar (a weekend or even a week) taking place in an outside
location (for example, in the mountains);
.
informal meetings and leisure activities among some members of the group,
especially those from abroad; and
.
sports activities, often performed as a team competing with other group teams,
for example, in a football cup organised by the department.

As an ethnographer, I could participate directly in some of these activities, while

others, such as sports or the group seminar, were reported to me in the course of the
interviews. In both research fields, I had the opportunity to go to lunch with people and
to attend the party. A close analysis of the ethnographical data reveals relevant
differences between the group culture in mechanical engineering and in materials
science. These disciplinary differences regarding group culture are elaborated in the
next section.
Contrasting features of group cultures in two engineering disciplines
In what follows, I present exemplary case analyses on a specific aspect of group life in
each discipline, namely daily lunch routines. Conforming to the rules of grounded
theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), close reading of selected ethnographical data aims at
generating relevant concepts for characterising the research topic. The procedure has
exemplary character; thus, the concepts developed in this section should prove their
validity for other aspects of group and disciplinary culture as well[2]. To start with,
lunch practices in the group of mechanical engineering are reported; this is compared
with an account of practices in the group of materials science; then, the contrasting
features of group cultures are explored.
The case of mechanical engineering Disciplinary
The group I observed at the department of mechanical engineering is an exclusively cultures in
male group. People use German as the language of communication, even though there
are several doctoral students from abroad. In this group, lunch takes place every day at engineering
11.20 in the canteen of the technical university. Lunch is scheduled early in order to
avoid the crowd of students coming in at 12 o’clock. Doctoral students as well as
postdocs or senior scientists gather for lunch. Even the professor sometimes joins the 29
group.
The first time I went to lunch, I had an appointment with one of the PhD students in
the morning in order to get information about his research. At 11.10, he told me that
people would go to lunch now and that we should get ready soon. Thus, we went to the
canteen in the main building. People belonging to this group always sit at the same two
tables in the canteen. When we arrived with our trays, six young men were already
seated and eating their meals; they seemed to me to eat very quickly. As I was much
slower, people waited, and it seemed to me they would have done so until I finished my
meal. Having eaten half of my plate, I felt that this was enough and said that we could
get up and go.
After lunch, one fraction of the group usually goes to the snack bar to have coffee;
the others go back to the office building for coffee. On the way back, my informant,
who came from Italy, told me that when he first arrived, he also ate very slowly. In
Italy, he explained to me, people take their time to eat their meal and they drink their
espresso very quickly; here, it’s just the other way round. But he had rapidly adapted to
the culture of the group, as he felt uncomfortable when people were waiting for him.
What can we learn about the culture of the group from this vignette? First, the
practices associated with lunch in this group are defined to a large extent: the time and
location of the meal are precisely fixed. As a newcomer, this was the first thing that
surprised me. Of course, this rule allows people to join in on a regular basis without
having to confer with each other before going to lunch, but on the other hand, this
leaves very little space for flexibility. Moreover, the terms of this informal meeting
seem to have quite a dominant impact on the schedule of the group members. In the
case described above, the ongoing activity of the interview was interrupted in order to
join colleagues for lunch. This happened repeatedly to me during my stay in this
group. The second aspect that struck me goes beyond the formal setting of lunch – it
refers to the very practice of eating. It was performed in a speedy, somewhat hurried
way, as if people were eager to get it done quickly. Even though people were friendly, I
could feel the pressure to adapt to the group’s tacit rules. The exposure to the rhythm
of activity at lunch disclosed the extent to which the group culture has to be
individually incorporated. Finally, my experience as an outsider was confirmed by the
PhD student who came from another cultural background. He too had experienced a
conflict between his own habitual practice and the practice of the group and he was
aware of the fact that he had adapted to the group culture.
To summarise this discussion, I would like to emphasise the following points:
.
lunch practices of the group are formalised to a certain degree;
.
the group culture has to be incorporated by the members of the group; and
.
in this process, individual cultures get subordinated to group culture.
EOI The case of materials science
28,1 In the materials science group, women account for 50 per cent of the PhD students and
are well represented among both postdoctoral fellows and senior scientists. In this
group, English is used as the language of communication.
To begin with, it turned out to be more difficult for me to join people for lunch in this
group. When I had an appointment with someone in the morning at 10 o’clock, the
30 interview usually lasted for two hours, and by the time I asked whether I could
accompany my informant to lunch, we had missed the group’s lunchtime. Furthermore,
my informant quite often had a private appointment or was going to do sport.
In this group, too, people go for lunch before 11.30 and they do so for the same reason,
namely to avoid the crowding by students at 12 o’clock, but the attendance seems to
fluctuate more. Moreover, there is one favourite canteen, but it is not unusual for smaller
groups to go to another canteen. Usually, the signal to go comes from one of the office
rooms shared by a dozen doctoral students. Due to the size of the group, people form into
subgroups of peers; hence postdocs who share office space usually go on their own.
When I was watching practical training in the laboratory, I managed to join a group
of PhD students for lunch. We went to one of the canteens on the campus. People
dispersed to queue for their preferred meal and then sat down at a free table. There
they waited until everybody had joined the table before they started to eat. During
lunch, a lively conversation developed; people were talking in English, but quite a few
were also trying to speak in each other’s language: an American PhD student
exercising to say something in German, a Swiss one practising Italian or explaining a
German idiom to a colleague from abroad.
Again, what are the features of group culture displayed in this vignette? First, in
contrast to the lunch culture observed in the mechanical engineering group, the
practices in the materials science group are obviously less formalised; moreover, there
is more individual flexibility in attending lunch. On the one hand, the ad hoc character
of lunch gathering made it more difficult for me as an outsider to join in; on the other
hand, socialising with the members of the group turned out to be more relaxed once I
had succeeded in joining them. Second, those who go for lunch together actually form
an ad hoc group and this has a temporary binding character. Thus, in contrast to the
practice in the mechanical engineering group, to have lunch together was viewed as a
sequence with a common beginning and ending. Finally, the specific cultural
background of single members was positively recognised in the social space of the
group. People referred to each other’s culture in a playful way and clearly enjoyed the
plurality of cultures present in the group. Cultural differences were not only
acknowledged – people also demonstrated their readiness to bridge cultural
boundaries.
To summarise this second vignette, the following points can be emphasised:
.
lunch practices are quite informal and give people individual flexibility;
.
ad hoc groups for lunch are considered socially binding; and
.
group culture is open to the diversity of individual cultures.

Contrasting group cultures

Generally, to practise a strong form of group life is part of the disciplinary cultures in
science and engineering. In the interview, both in materials science and in mechanical
engineering, the head of the group stressed the importance of a friendly group Disciplinary
atmosphere to prevent competition among group members. Thus, in order to cultures in
strengthen the group as a research unit in the struggle for reputation in the scientific
field, the unity of the group has to be emphasised and norms of social behaviour in the engineering
group have to be established and practised. This occurs in the formal and informal
settings of daily group life. Nevertheless, mechanical engineering and materials science
differ in the type of tacit rules and norms established in their group life. 31
Drawing from the short descriptions of my field experience at lunch, group cultures
in both disciplines can be contrasted along the following lines:
.
formality-informality (time, location);
.
discipline-flexibility (subordination of individual needs); and
.
uniformity-diversity (group norms).

The culture in mechanical engineering emphasises formal structures, even with respect
to informal daily practices; it encourages the subordination of individual needs to
group discipline, thereby promoting uniformity over diversity. Such characteristics
often apply to all-male institutions and they foster patterns of male bonding. Actually,
this type of culture can historically be traced back to the establishment of engineering
education at the end of the nineteenth century, and it hints at the military heritage of
engineering (Berner, 1997; Marry, 2004; Zachmann, 2004). The culture in materials
science turns out to be more informal; it allows for more individual flexibility in daily
group life, thereby stimulating diversity and creating informal social ties among group
members. Obviously, these characteristics are rooted in late twentieth century culture
and they may hint at postmodernist concepts of plurality and creativity. Thus,
discussion of contrasts between group cultures in mechanical engineering and
materials science poses the question of the historical roots of actual cultural
characteristics and the broader social context of their emergence. Obviously, this has
strong gender implications.
Contrasting group cultures in both disciplines also raises the question of
governance. Evidently, social life is regulated to a certain extent through tacit group
norms in both cases; however, the specific forms of governance at work in each field
clearly differ. Given the fact that key structural features of the labour market are
incorporated in research organisation in engineering sciences, it might be interesting to
look at these differences from an organisational point of view. In her study on
enterprises and their relation to affirmative action, Susanne Weber distinguished
bureaucracy and clan as two different types of organisations (Weber, 1998). The former
type is characterised by hierarchy as system of governance, the latter type by the
interconnection of social norms with economic principles. Whether this distinction is
pertinent to the differences between mechanical engineering and materials science in
the academic context needs further exploration.

Disciplinary cultures and the scientific field

The final sections of this paper are devoted to the theoretical contextualisation of
findings. Differences found between cultures in mechanical engineering and materials
science are discussed with reference to Bourdieu’s theory of the scientific field
(Bourdieu, 1976, 1998). In particular, I ask how cultural characteristics might be related
EOI to the structural position of each discipline in the scientific field. To conclude, the
28,1 results presented so far are highlighted from a gender perspective.
In Bourdieu, the scientific field is regarded as a relatively autonomous field. Like
any social field, hierarchies and social struggles structure it, however, these struggles
follow the specific rules and mechanisms of the field. The relative autonomy of the
scientific field depends on its capacity to refract demands from outside and to translate
32 them into its own logic. As a consequence, the degree of autonomy varies between
different types of disciplines.
Historically, namely in the German-speaking parts of Europe, engineers had to
struggle for the recognition of their field as a scientific discipline and its integration into
academia; the institutionalisation of engineering disciplines in higher education by the
end of the nineteenth century occurred with reference to a professional field outside
science and it is still to a significant degree subject to greater extrinsic requirements than
are the sciences (Gilbert, 2006). A study of the German case has shown that the shift in
engineering identity over the course of this struggle occurred with reference to practice
(as opposed to science), thereby establishing a close link between the engineer and the
figure of the army officer and thus reasserting masculinity (Zachmann, 2004, p. 130).
As a result, up to the present, engineering disciplines maintain a contradictory
relation to the scientific field. In terms of the standards of the scientific field itself
(cultural capital ), there is a hierarchical relation between the (natural) sciences and
engineering (sciences), the former being considered the pure sciences and enjoying a
higher status. On the other hand, in terms of the dominant values in society as a whole
(economic capital ), the relation is reversed: engineering disciplines are closely
connected to the professional field of industry and have access to economic resources
outside the scientific field.
This brief theoretical sketch allows one to contextualise the empirical findings on
the disciplinary cultures elaborated above and thus to address the following issues:
which elements define the structural position of mechanical engineering and materials
science in the scientific field? And, furthermore, how do characteristic elements of
disciplinary cultures relate to the structural position of each discipline in the field?
Mechanical engineering was one of the first engineering disciplines to be
institutionalised. In Switzerland, it has existed right from the foundation of the
technical university in 1855 and, moreover, it is strongly linked to the development of a
national machine industry and the concomitant professional field. In the controversial
relation between engineering and science, mechanical engineering is clearly positioned
on the engineering pole. In the last 30 years, however, the decline of the machine
industry and the rise of information technology have threatened the traditional
position and the boundaries of mechanical engineering.
Materials science, however, is a very young discipline. In Switzerland, it was
established as such in the early 1980s. Initially, it grew out of mechanical engineering
and chemistry and is now positioned at the interface of physics, chemistry and biology
on the one hand and engineering on the other. In other words, materials science tends
to challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the controversial relation between
engineering and science, it is clearly positioned closer to the science pole than
mechanical engineering. Its interdisciplinary character, however, makes it a hybrid in
the scientific family.
This suggests that the characteristic features of the group cultures described above Disciplinary
are closely related to the specific positions of mechanical engineering and materials cultures in
science in the scientific field: The structural position of materials science, with its
interdisciplinary character and its proximity to the science pole, is reflected in a group engineering
culture that supports individuality and diversity. Whereas the structural position of
mechanical engineering, a traditional engineering discipline with strong links to the
industrial field, is reflected in a culture that incorporates elements of hierarchy and 33
discipline.

Gendered/gendering practices?
Based on the comparison of mechanical engineering and materials science, the research
results presented in this paper show some evidence for a variety of cultures among
engineering disciplines. Moreover, there is strong support for the idea that these
differences in disciplinary cultures are relevant from a gender perspective: obviously,
the openness to diversity found in the daily practices of the materials science group
also provides more scope for gender diversity and hints at a de-gendering of this
specific field. On the other hand, the group culture in mechanical engineering tends to
reproduce features of homosocial male worlds and to link up with specific aspects of
male socialisation, like military education; hence it contributes to the persistence of
male dominance in the field.
As a major result, the analysis of my field data supports the hypothesis that
disciplinary cultures in engineering are gendered and have a gendering effect of their
own (Gilbert et al., 2006). This should be conceived as a two-way process: engineering
cultures incorporate and reproduce aspects of gendered socialisation and,
consequently, they have a more or less selective effect on gender identities. This
again is reflected in their gender composition.
Furthermore, discussion of research results has emphasised the need for a
theoretical and historical contextualisation of disciplines. A Bourdieusian framework
can account to a certain degree for the differences found between mechanical
engineering and materials science; however, the historical dimension has proved to be
relevant as well. Thus, for the comparative analysis of the gendered and gendering
character of disciplinary cultures in engineering, the following dimensions seem to be
crucial:
.
the actual positioning of a discipline in the scientific field and its concomitant
status in the field; and
. the social and historical context of emergence of a particular field and its
interrelation with masculinity at the time of institutionalisation.

Notes
1. The results presented in this paper are part of a research project on “Gender and engineering
cultures in academy”. This project runs from 2005 to 2008 and is funded by the Swiss
National Science Foundation.
2. The analysis of my field data so far confirms the validity of these concepts for other aspects
of group culture as well as for the larger context of disciplinary cultures, for example,
education practices; yet the investigation is still in process.
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Anne-Françoise Gilbert can be contacted at: [email protected]

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