Hunt the shadow not the substance: the rise of the career academic in construction education

Abstract

Construction education is context-laden, navigating and reflecting the byzantine influences of period, place and person. Despite considerable rhetoric, in UK higher education and construction studies in particular the importance of contextualized teaching is being devalued. Over the past decade a growing number of new teaching staff to university lecturing has limited or no industrial experience of the construction sector. This paper explores the rise of the career academic in construction education and implications for teaching standards and student learning. Whilst career academics exhibit research skills and afford funding possibilities that universities find appealing, pedagogical studies suggest that experience-led, contextualized teaching offer students enhanced educational value. Policy-making and pedagogical strategies that continue to value research at the expense of teaching excellence coupled with recruitment of career academics as opposed to industry professionals present new challenges for construction education, teaching and student learning.

Educating Students for the Collaborative Workplace: Facilitating Interdisciplinary Learning in Construction Courses

“…This demonstrates a disparity between the emerging 'career academic' (Tennant et al, 2015), tending by nature to be specialist and discipline-specific, and the increasing demands for inter-and cross-professional training from the workplace. The trend toward specialist HEI educators leads to built environment programmes being led by narrow specialists, themselves without broad industry experience.…”

Can Virtual Reality assist the recoupling of theory and practice in Civil Engineering education?

“…It is possible that as a vocational and deeply contextladen discipline, Civil Engineering may be disproportionately affected by these trends in comparison to other degree schemes (Barr, 2008;Tennant, Murray, Forster, & Pilcher, 2015). The combined effects of research-active teaching and larger student numbers can be seen as leading to a prioritization over time of promoting the development of logical-mathematical intelligence over bodily-kinesthetic and spatial intelligence.…”

Problematising the ‘Career Academic’ in UK construction and engineering education: does the system want what the system gets?

“…In this article, we understand 'system' as the UK Higher Education system in its education practices and policies from central government, their implementation by management and Human Resources (HR), and their influence on student experience and teaching team dynamics. We understand 'Career Academic' as someone pursuing academia as a Career, seeking promotion and professional longevity via administrative, teaching, but primarily through high quality research publications, grant funding and evidence of impact (Barr, 2008, Tennant et al, 2015. These academics have little or no meaningful industrial experience related to construction and engineering.…”

“…By the 1990s, construction and engineering academics with limited or no practical experience were becoming prevalent, with adverse implications for teaching (Barr, 2008). Recently, such arguments have increased (Barr, 2008;Alplay and Jones, 2012;Graham, 2012;Westacott, 2013;Tennant et al, 2015), with declining numbers of academics with relevant industrial or practical experience (Royal Academy of Engineering, 2014) now a great concern (Arlett et al, 2010). It is one of many "faculty shortcomings", with significant "variation in teaching skills and student understanding" (Alplay and Jones, 2012, p.615).…”