Maria Paula Diogo (CHFCT/DCSA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Ana Cardoso de Matos (CIDEHUS, Universidade de Évora)

The creation of a well-defined professional consciousness relies largely on its corpus of knowledge.  Only those who receive specific training are able to deal with the theoretical and practical questions of a specific professional field. Therefore schools play a decisive role in shaping the profile required for each profession.

In Portugal, the teaching of engineering remained, until quite late, within the borders of military training. It was commonly accepted that engineers should be able to perform both military and civil engineering tasks; their academic training aimed, therefore, to develop military expertises, which were complemented by a set of subjects related to civil engineering. Moreover it was also accepted that Portuguese engineers should go abroad to improve their academic training and expertise.

Both the model of “hybrid” training and the option of sending the most promising students to study in foreign schools were obvious signs of a peripheral economy within an already industrialized Europe. Although from the mid 19th century onwards, engineers were considered as key figures in the new public-works based industrialist agenda, they remained largely outside of the industrial sphere until the 1920s. For a long time Portuguese engineers were viewed as one-dimensional technicians: as “builders,” rather than multifaceted technical experts.

The Portuguese engineering training system mirrors the struggle between different strategies for national modernisation. Asserting a non-military engineering profile, sending students abroad, implementing “hands-on” curricula, and using engineering expertise in factories were pivotal strategies in the complex process leading to Portuguese modernity. In this paper we intend to analyse some of the issues concerning the Portuguese engineering training, mainly by discussing its methodological and epistemological references, and the controversies that surrounded its modernization.