Each one of us has views about education, how discipline should function, how individuals learn, how they should be motivated, what intelligence is, and the structures (content and subjects) of the curriculum. Perhaps the most important beliefs that (beginning) teachers bring with them are their notions about what constitutes "good teaching". The scholarship of teaching requires that (beginning) teachers should examine (evaluate) these views in the light of knowledge currently available about the curriculum and instruction, and decide their future actions on the basis of that analysis. Such evaluations are best undertaken when classrooms are treated as laboratories of inquiry (research) where teachers establish what works best for them. Two instructor centred and two learner centred philosophies of knowledge, curriculum and instruction are used to discern the fundamental (basic) questions that engineering educators should answer in respect of their own beliefs and practice. They point to a series of classroom activities that will enable them to challenge their own beliefs, and at the same time affirm, develop, or change their philosophies of knowledge, curriculum and instruction.

John Heywood is a Professorial Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin-University of Dublin. He was given the best research publication award of the Division for the Professions of the American Educational Research Association for Engineering Education: Research and Development in the Curriculum and Instruction in 2006. Recently, he published The Assessment of Learning in Engineering Education: Practice and Policy. Previous studies among his 150 publications have included Learning, Adaptability and Change and The Challenge for Education and Industry, and co-authored Analysing Jobs, a study of engineers at work. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Engineers of Ireland. In 2016 he received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award from the Pope for his services to education. In 2018 the TELPhE Division awarded him the best publication award and a meritorious award.