Abstract:
This study forms part of a collaboration project between universities in South Africa and Sweden
in which we investigate whether the emphasis in undergraduate mathematics courses for
engineering students would benefit from being more conceptually oriented than a traditional more
procedurally oriented way of teaching. In this paper, we report in some detail from two interviews
with professional engineers, selected to represent two different ‘poles’ of engineering work. The
aim was to explore different kinds of arguments regarding the role of mathematics in engineering
work, as well as some common across contexts. Both interviewees feel that conceptual
mathematics is more important for engineering work, although the role of the procedural aspect
was seen by one of the interviewees also to be important, but in a very intricate way.
