A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE PREREQUISITES FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CURRICULUM MAPPING APPROACH IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION (A CASE STUDY OF ENGINEERING DEPARTMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KASHAN)

One of the desirable and expected features of engineering education curricula is the continuous and regular revision of the course content according to the needs of society and employers. In Iran’s higher education, these revisions have been conducted in a centralized manner by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, for a long time. In the higher education systems of the world, however, professors and educational groups play the main role in promoting and improving curricula. One of the famous approaches is curriculum drawing or curriculum mapping. In this approach, professors are used and in a collaborative and cooperative way. Considering that the Ministry delegated the powers of curriculum planning to the level one and two universities, the aim of the current research was to investigate the degree of tendency of engineering groups to implement the curriculum design approach and also to investigate the prerequisites for its implementation. In this regard, 14 people from the managers of engineering departments of Kashan University were selected by purposeful sampling method. A semi-structured interview was conducted with them to collect information. The data obtained from the interviews were coded and categorized in a holistic way in the ATLAS.Ti software environment. The findings showed that despite the delegation of curriculum authority to Kashan University, revision of engineering curricula is not done regularly. The mentality of engineering professors is more in line with the focused approach and the delivery of high-level curricula. From the analysis of the interview’s, it can be said with confidence that the necessity of implementing decentralized planning approaches, such as curriculum design, is fully understood by engineering professors. However, factors such as the lack of knowledge of academic authority for curriculum planning, the lack of clear educational and administrative regulations, and the lack of necessary support have caused decentralized curriculum planning approaches not to be used systematically.