Conceptions of Engineering Leadership
and the Role of Universities
in Developing Engineering Leaders
Dr Andrew T.M. Phillips
A dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Education, University Learning and Teaching
Imperial College London
June 2014
I declare that, except where explicit reference is made to the work of others,
this dissertation is the result of my own work and has not been submitted for
any other degree at Imperial College London or any other institution.
Dr Andrew T.M. Phillips
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This document is available on figshare
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1198228
The author can be contacted at [email protected]
Conceptions of Engineering Leadership
and the Role of Universities
in Developing Engineering Leaders
Dr Andrew T.M. Phillips
Abstract
Civil engineering as a profession has undergone considerable changes
in recent years, with fragmentation of specialities and an increasing role
in setting the agenda in response to societal challenges. Within civil engi-
neering undergraduate education there is a sense of curriculum crowding,
with both learners and teachers experiencing knowledge content overload.
In the context of a research intensive university such as Imperial College
London undergraduate teaching must also be balanced with other teach-
ing, research and administrative commitments, as well as other professional
activities.
Through interviews with engineering leaders this dissertation seeks to
assess whether graduates, having completed an MEng degree in civil en-
gineering, are sufficiently prepared to take on roles within the engineering
profession, finding that in some respects desirable attributes are not ad-
dressed in current undergraduate teaching and learning practice. Through
interpretation of the interviews alongside a concepts review of appropriate
curriculum ideologies and learning models, it is concluded that the current
concept of a curriculum places too high an emphasis on the knowledge
dimension of learning, to the detriment of attributes associated with the
skills, attitudes and experience dimensions.
An interpretation of the engineering design process is presented as a
potential framework, beyond curriculum knowledge content, within which
to situate and assess current and changing teaching and learning practice.
Keywords: engineering education, knowledge, skills, attitudes, experi-
ence, leadership, education partnerships, engineering design process.
Word count: approximately 16,600 (excluding quotes).
i
Contents
Abstract i
Contents ii
Acknowledgements iv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Motivation for the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Research aim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Concepts review 6
2.1 Engineering Institution requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Curriculum ideologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Learning models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 Learning and teaching within the disciplines . . . . . . . . . 13
2.5 Agenda for change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Methods 24
3.1 Participant selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 MBTI data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.4 Ethical considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.5 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4 Results and discussion 29
4.1 Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.2 Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.2.1 Communication and collaboration . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2.2 Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2.3 Convince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.3 Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.1 Curiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.2 Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3.3 Respect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3.4 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.4 Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.5 Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.6 Engineering design process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.7 Education partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.8 MBTI data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
ii
5 Conclusions 59
6 Reflections 61
References 62
Appendices 67
List of Figures
1 Illeris’ learning model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 Kolb’s learning model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3 Interpretation of the Engineering Design Process . . . . . . 52
List of Tables
1 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) distributions . . . . . 56
2 MBTI category values on a normalised scale . . . . . . . . . 57
3 MBTI category percentage splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
iii
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to all the staff in the Educational Development Unit. Particular
thanks go to my supervisor David Riley who has been a tremendous help
in navigating the treacherous waters between the disciplines.
Thanks go to my colleagues and friends in the Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering who have been subjected to a barrage of
lunchtime discussions. In particular Ahmer Wadee, Leroy Gardner and
Lorenzo Macorini. Thanks also go to Becky Naessens, who has kept the
Group Design Projects on course while I have been busy as a student.
Thanks go to my fiancee, Jill Moore, who has suffered my extended
filing system incorporating most of any available space, while she has been
engaged in her own studies. Thanks also go to my family who remain ever
responsive to my considered thoughts, often disguised as rants.
Final thanks go to all of the participants who proved to be enthusiastic
in their support of the project, and with whom I am engaged in ongo-
ing discussions, which I hope will serve to promote new and continuing
partnerships between industry and academia.
Participants
• Mike Cook
Senior Partner and Chairman, Buro Happold
Adjunct Professor of Creative Design
Imperial College London
• John Lyle
Director, Advanced Technology and Research, Arup
• Ed McCann
Senior Director, Useful Simple Trust
Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Innovation
University College London
• Roger Ridsdill Smith
Senior Partner, Foster + Partners
• Nigel Tonks
Director, Arup
iv
1 Introduction
The focus of this work is on assessing the knowledge and understanding,
skills and attitude attributes that are considered beneficial in allowing grad-
uates of civil engineering MEng degree programmes to develop and become
engineering leaders. The work considers what role universities should have
in providing teaching and learning experiences directed towards allowing
students to develop these attributes.
Conceptions were sought from engineering leaders, based within well
regarded, international civil engineering and architectural consultancies.
This offers a perspective not often considered in educational studies where
a direct focus has been given to either students as learners, or academics as
teachers. The work may be considered as seeking those attributes associat-
ed with engineering excellence as opposed to compliance, with engineering
leadership taken as a demonstration of current or previous engineering ex-
cellence.
1.1 Background
Within Great Britain, North America and Europe traditional engineering
curricula have tended to focus on the acquisition of knowledge and under-
standing, with the development of skills and attitude characteristics given
less attention in comparison. However civil engineering courses in the UK
have undergone substantial curriculum changes over the last decade. The
prime driver of these changes may be considered to be the requirement
to complete a Master of Engineering (MEng) course rather than a Bache-
lor of Engineering (BEng) undergraduate course in order to enter a career
pathway directed towards achieving Charted Engineer (CEng) status. The
MEng Civil Engineering degree at a research intensive university such as
Imperial College London (Imperial) is subject to the demands of a range
of stakeholders with potentially competing agendas. These stakeholders
include students with a range of motivations, academics responsible for
delivering in both the teaching and research fields, engineering and non-
engineering industries interested in employing civil engineering graduates
and the Engineering Institutions. The Institutions (the Institution of Civil
Engineers (ICE), the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), the
Charted Institution of Highways and Transportation, and the Institute
of Highways Engineers), through the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM)
provide accreditation, required for graduates to progress to Charted En-
gineering (CEng) status without undertaking a further degree course, to
those degrees which are ‘of an appropriate standard and cover the nec-
essary core civil engineering subjects such as materials, geotechnics, fluid
1
mechanics and structures’ (ICE).
This dissertation seeks to expand on concepts introduced in my library
project (Engineering education, research and design: breaking in and out
of liminal space (Phillips, 2012)) in terms of identifying common areas of
discussion between engineering students, educators, researchers and de-
signers, with an increased emphasis on curriculum design, focusing on the
development of skills and attitudes as well as core knowledge and under-
standing.
In brief my library project suggested that the distinguishing feature
of a civil engineering degree in Great Britain, North America and Europe
was development of the ability to design. It introduced the concept that
engineering education, research and design could be viewed as iterative
processes with learners, educators, researchers and designers required to
work in a state of flux, breaking in and out of liminal space. The ac-
quisition and participation metaphors, threshold concepts, liminal space,
divergent—convergent thinking, problem definition and problem solving,
were highlighted as being common narratives across engineering educa-
tion, research and design. Potential discourse between the need for en-
gineering students to develop deep knowledge and understanding as well
as the ability to generate innovative design concepts was commented on,
with the beneficial role of group design exercises in bridging the discourse
highlighted. In particular I introduced the concept of informed creativity
suggesting that there is a minimum level of knowledge and understanding
that must be achieved by the learner before creative design exercises can
be considered likely to result in realisable solutions, while also suggesting
that increased knowledge and understanding has the potential to allow cre-
ative as opposed to routine design thinking (Howard et al., 2008). It was
acknowledged that both staff and students may be resistant to accepting
creativity as a desirable characteristic for engineering graduates to devel-
op (Stouffer et al., 2004). In closing I highlighted that increasingly high
expectations are being placed on civil engineering graduates, commenting
that:
Only through encouraging self motivated life long learning and
reflective practice can we expect to equip them with the skills
and experience that they will require to assess and address the
problems that the world looks to them to solve.
(Phillips, 2012, page 11)
In this dissertation I explore conceptions of the desired knowledge and
understanding, skills and attitudes, that may allow a graduate to develop
into an engineering leader, and the role that universities should have in
developing these. This is done through conducting and analysing interviews
2
with established civil engineering leaders. I am interested in the conception
of engineering leadership as a way of being rather than necessarily as a job
title indicator.
1.2 Motivation for the study
My motivation for the study arose from my various roles at Imperial. The
primary motivation comes from my role as the lead for the Group Design
Projects1 carried out over a six week period at the end of the third year of
the four year MEng Civil Engineering degree course taught in the Depart-
ment of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Secondary motivators are
my roles as module coordinator for the first and second year Structural Me-
chanics courses on the MEng degree, module coordinator for the Structural
Analysis course delivered as part of the MSc Advanced Structural Engi-
neering Cluster, within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engi-
neering, and my role as Director of Education for the Royal British Legion
Centre for Blast Injuries Studies at Imperial College London, a transdisci-
plinary centre recruiting post-graduate students and post-doctoral research
associates from the natural sciences, engineering and medicine, with both
civilian and military backgrounds. I am also able to draw on experience
supervising PhD students and research associates within my own research
group, as well as final year MEng and MSc project students. I bring the
perspectives of my research in Structural Biomechanics and experiences of
outreach education through developing and running an Engineering Mas-
terclass as well as several other activities through the Royal Institution.
I am interested in the processes associated with the acquisition of core
engineering knowledge and understanding and the development of engineer-
ing and design skills. I am interested in whether these sometimes disparate
activities can be viewed from the perspective of a learning framework or
a design process, with a focus on developing engineering leadership, taken
as an indicator of engineering excellence.
The work described in this dissertation is informed from the ontological
and epistemological perspectives of pragmatism, constructivism and con-
structionism (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013, ch 4). That is that I
see the ‘truth’ of an idea as dependent upon the efficacy and efficiency of
the explanation. I see the idea of ‘reality’ as dependent on the individual,
but believe that in a discipline such as civil engineering there must be a sig-
nificant component of shared social reality and truth in the form of shared
paradigms and shared symbolic representation and language. However the
formulation, verification, validation and falsification of paradigms (Popper,
1959, Kuhn, 1962) need not result from social construction.
1www.groupdesignprojects.org.uk
3
In conversations with academic colleagues and a number of industrial
contacts involved in the Group Design Projects recurring topics of discus-
sion have focused around broad and deep thinking, creativity and engineer-
ing leadership, echoing the focus of the institution guidelines as discussed
in Section 2.1. Specific aims of the work are to assess whether these de-
scriptions are useful concepts for those reflecting on careers in the civil en-
gineering industry and whether they accord with the attributes they look
for when recruiting civil engineering graduates. In seeking to investigate
these aims consideration was given to whether the conceptions of under-
graduate students, academics or industrialists would be most relevant to
collect and analyse. It was decided that with regards to conceptions of
the graduate attributes required to perform in industry the most relevant
group of people to consider were industrialists as this group is in the po-
sition of ‘living it’ or ‘having lived it’. This is not to discount the views
of either academics or undergraduate students, but allowed a pragmatic
focus to the scope of the dissertation. An additional consideration was
the stage of career trajectory that participant conception might be sought
at. Consideration was given to whether recent graduates, project leaders
or company leaders may be able to provide the most insight. Company
leaders were selected as those most likely to have had the opportunity
to critically reflect on the attributes that might have been instrumental
in their career trajectory, as well as to consider the attributes that they
would want a graduate to possess to provide a fit with the culture of their
respective companies. It was also decided to focus on civil engineering con-
sultancies in preference to civil engineering contractors, due to a specific
focus on design which I highlighted in my library project (Phillips, 2012).
I chose to focus on those engineering consultancies who have had an in-
volvement in the Group Design Projects or have otherwise demonstrated
a continued interest and involvement in dialogue between academia and
industry. While there are several cases of industrial engineering leaders
being involved in specific undergraduate activities the conceptions of this
group of stakeholders is not often taken as the perspective of interest in
engineering educational studies.
1.3 Research aim
The research aim of this work is to assess whether the concepts of broad
and deep knowledge and understanding, creativity and leadership have rel-
evance from the perspective of industrial engineering leaders. The work
assesses expanding these concepts in characterising the range of desirable
attributes potentially displayed by graduates of an MEng civil engineer-
ing degree programme, as taught at a research intensive university such
4
as Imperial. In this context engineering leadership and the potential for a
graduate to develop and become an engineering leader are taken as indica-
tions of engineering excellence.
The dissertation is divided into a number of sections: introduction, con-
cepts review, methods, results and discussion, conclusions and reflections,
with sections often divided into a number of subsections.
5
2 Concepts review
Prior to presenting the methods of investigation it is appropriate to review
those guidelines and concepts that may be considered as having relevance
to the teaching of engineering, in particular civil engineering at university.
2.1 Engineering Institution requirements
In order to be accredited by the JBM an MEng Civil Engineering Degree
must meet the criteria set out in the JBM MEng Guidelines. In these
guidelines it is stated that:
. . . an accredited MEng programme is intended to provide the
distinctive educational base that will produce graduates who are
practical, articulate, numerate, literate, imaginative, versatile,
confident and inquisitive. Such graduates should have the po-
tential to take responsibility for innovation, technology transfer
and change, looking for ways of exploiting emerging technolo-
gies and, where appropriate, promoting advanced designs and
design methods. They will need to possess creativity founded
upon a deep understanding of engineering principles and may
eventually control projects involving advanced technology that
require the management of risk, resources and large capital bud-
gets. (JBM MEng Guidelines, page 1)
An MEng programme should create the platform from which
individual aspirations to register as a Chartered Engineer can
develop, and therefore it is essential that a recognised minimum
of engineering science and technology be safeguarded within the
programme . . . There should be industrial involvement in both
the design and delivery of MEng programmes.
(JBM MEng Guidelines, page 2)
The essence of an MEng programme is the education of stu-
dents to an appropriate depth of understanding and breadth of
knowledge needed to work within and, eventually, to lead and
manage inter-disciplinary teams . . . it is designed for students
with high academic ability and motivation.
(JBM MEng Guidelines, page 2)
The guidelines go on to specify that programmes should contain at
least five core subjects, including structures, materials and geotechnics,
and at least two from fluid mechanics, surveying, transport infrastructure
engineering, public health, construction management, environmental engi-
neering and architectural technology, stating that:
6
These core subjects should reflect the aims of the degree pro-
gramme, and they should embrace theory, analysis, design and
engineering practice. They should also provide an appropriate
integration of the engineering sciences, mathematics, mechanics
and materials. (JBM MEng Guidelines, page 3)
The engineering subjects should:
. . . be taught in the context of design . . . with appropriate ac-
count of issues of sustainability, health and safety and construc-
tion. (JBM MEng Guidelines, page 3)
It is observed throughout the guidelines and associated annexes that
there is a focus on the desired qualities, traits and tacit skills of graduates,
rather than detailed identification of the core knowledge to be contained
in the curriculum.
The professional award of CEng status by the Engineering Institutions
is overseen by the Engineering Council (EC) who also provide guidelines on
what is expected from an accredited MEng degree course (EC Guidelines,
2013). The EC guidelines state that graduates from MEng courses:
. . . will have the ability to integrate their knowledge and un-
derstanding of mathematics, science, computer-based methods,
design, the economic, social and environmental context, and
engineering practice to solve a substantial range of engineering
problems, some of a complex nature. They will have acquired
much of this ability through involvement in individual and group
design projects, which have had a greater degree of industrial
involvement than those in Bachelors degree programmes.
(EC Guidelines, 2013, page 16)
As with the JBM guidelines it is observed throughout the EC guide-
lines that there is a focus on outcomes in terms of graduate characteris-
tics rather than specific curriculum context. In the UK there are a total
of 44 universities running accredited MEng Civil Engineering and related
courses (JBM Accredited Courses). Within both sets of guidelines it is
evident that value is placed on engineering leadership and creativity, with
the defining characteristic of a Chartered Engineer being the ability to de-
sign. Hence the guidelines provide an entry point into the topic and scope
of this dissertation.
While this dissertation, like my library project (Phillips, 2012), does not
seek to assess the guidelines developed by the EC or the JBM it is impor-
tant to develop the discussion and arguments contained in this dissertation
in the context of the accreditation requirements of the Engineering Insti-
tutions.
7
2.2 Curriculum ideologies
The role of the professional civil engineer has become increasingly complex
in recent years, with increased interaction between multiple engineering
and other discipline specialists. Increasingly society looks to professional
civil engineers to provide leadership of complex transdisciplinary projects.
Universities have responded to this societal need with what may be con-
sidered to be increasingly crowded or even conflicting curricula aimed at
providing tacit skills as well as deep knowledge and understanding. Re-
search has been carried out into alternative curriculum types. Although
much of this is based on the school system, perhaps due to the vast expan-
sion in curricula at the university level, it is useful to examine the proposed
curriculum types.
Schiro 2008, ch 1 describes four curriculum ideologies, two of which I
believe have specific relevance for the civil engineering undergraduate cur-
riculum at a research intensive university such as Imperial. The Scholar
Academic Ideology in which it is believed that knowledge should be organ-
ised based on the academic disciplines found at universities. In this cur-
riculum ideology an academic discipline is viewed as a hierarchical commu-
nity with enquirers (researchers or scholars) engaged in discovering ‘truth’,
teachers disseminating truth, and learners whose role is to ‘learn the truth
so that they may become proficient members of the discipline’. In this sense
the academic ideology draws comparisons with the communities of practice
described by Lave and Wenger (2003), although we are left with the ques-
tion of how the discovered and learned truth finds application outside of
the community of the academic discipline. The Social Efficiency Ideology
in which it is believed that the role of teaching and learning is to develop
students to the extent that they can meet the needs of and function as ma-
ture members of society. There is an emphasis on the graduating student
as an outcome of the ‘terminal objectives of the curriculum’, acquiring ‘the
behaviours prescribed by the curriculum’. Although skills are introduced,
these seem to be in the context of kinematic rather than cognitive function.
The question arises as to how knowledge and understanding are developed
or transferred within the the context of a curriculum based on this ideol-
ogy. The Learner Centred Ideology and the Social Reconstruction Ideology
in my view lack a sufficiently pragmatic perspective to achieve relevance
in engineering education. As commented on by Schiro:
The existence of the competing visions of what good education
consists of and the corresponding lack of understanding regard-
ing these visions among educators . . . causes confusion and dis-
comfort . . . ’ (Schiro, 2008, ch 1, page 2)
8
Is is clear that there are dangers in adopting any of the individual
ideologies in isolation. Comparisons can be drawn with the dangers of
adopting either the acquisition metaphor or the participation metaphor to
the exclusion of the other as highlighted by Sfard (1998).
Ross (2000, ch 1), taking as inspiration the words of Sir David Ec-
cles (UK Education Minister, 1954–57, 59–62) in signalling an increased
government involvement in setting an educational agenda by opening up
‘the secret garden of the curriculum’, describes four curriculum ideologies
based on the metaphor of garden types. Two of these gardens echo the
scholar academic and social efficiency ideology. The Baroque Curriculum
may be viewed as a metaphor for the scholar academic ideology, with the
Baroque garden enclosed ‘within a strong frame, defining what is within
and without the garden’. The Dig for Victory Curriculum may be viewed
as a metaphor for the social efficiency ideology, with a focus on education
providing skills of immediate use to society. As with the learner centred
and social reconstruction ideologies, the Naturally Landscaped Curriculum
may be considered to lack a sufficiently pragmatic aspect. The Cottage
Curriculum is viewed as a mix of curriculum ideologies ‘ossified in form
and function to the point that the reasons for their existence are simply
because they have always been like this’. The contemporary university cur-
riculum is perhaps best viewed from this perspective, developed through
competing ideologies, now resistant to change that might compromise the
stable balance between them.
In practice, as noted by Ross (2000) individual subjects, courses and
modules within a discipline specific curriculum are developed based on
the judgements and values of individual academics, who in my experience,
as educators rather than educationalists, will be unaware of competing
ideologies, selecting from one or several without conscious thought.
2.3 Learning models
It could be considered peculiar that from a teaching perspective the ques-
tion of ‘what should we teach?’ is often considered separately from the
question of ‘how should we teach it?’, while from a learning perspective
the single question might be ‘what is the most effective and efficient way
to learn what we are being taught?’. I believe it is therefore useful to
consider learning models in the context of this question. Although I have
characterised civil engineering education as spanning the scholar academic
and social efficiency ideologies, a research intensive university such as Im-
perial may be considered to be learner centred, not in that it places the
development of the learner above that of either the academic disciplines
or society, but in that responsibility for learner development is placed on
9
the learner. Hence it seems sensible to consider learning models in or-
der to provide a framework within which individual learners can position
themselves.
Many university educators have heard of Bloom’s taxonomy of learn-
ing (Bloom, 1956), although in my experience know little about it beyond
it providing a ranked list of different levels of learning. Few are aware of
the original intention to develop volumes specific to the cognitive (knowl-
edge), affective (attitude) and psychomotor (skills) domains. In a revision
of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001) the cognitive domain is inter-
preted as having knowledge and cognitive process dimensions, while also
reassessing some of the original knowledge categories. While the knowledge
(factual, conceptual, procedural, meta-cognitive) and cognitive process (re-
member, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create) dimensions resonate
with my experiences it is evident that the taxonomy is aimed at inform-
ing the debate surrounding standardisation of the curriculum as taught in
North American schools, with the examples used often covering minutiae of
a curriculum and in my view over assessing the levels of the taxonomy that
a particular task represents. It may be considered advantageous to have a
less prescriptive framework within which to situate university learning and
teaching.
Illeris (2003, 2009) presents a more complete learning model in which
he pulls together various strands of educational research, emphasising the
emotional and social aspects in addition to the cognitive aspect. This inter-
dependency between the cognitive, emotional and social domains has also
been recognised and developed by researchers such as Vygotsky (McLeod,
2014) and Bandura (1977). In the context of university and life long learn-
ing Illeris’ model is compelling, with the suggested four levels of learning
resonating with my experiences as a teacher and a learner. Cumulative
learning is described as an isolated process of learning where facts may be
learnt separately to each other. It may be compared to the factual and
remembering aspects of the revised taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001) and
the acquisition metaphor (Sfard, 1998). Assimilative learning is described
as a linking process where new knowledge or truths are assimilated into an
existing framework. If the basis of the acquisition metaphor is the accumu-
lation of knowledge blocks, assimilative learning may be considered to be
the process of building using these blocks to form a knowledge structure.
Accommodative or transcendent learning is described as the deconstruc-
tion and reconstruction of part of an existing knowledge scheme. Within
the context of university teaching it may be compared to threshold con-
cepts (Meyer and Land, 2003, 2005, Cousin, 2010), in that it represents
troublesome learning, requiring the learner to be guided into a liminal
10
space, emerging with a revised view of both the threshold and associated
concepts. The accumulative and assimilative levels of learning are tak-
en from Piaget’s work on the cognitive development of children (McLeod,
2012). Piaget discusses states of equilibrium and dis-equilibrium which
may be taken as equivalent to entering a liminal state, while the zone of
proximal development proposed by Vygotsky may also be considered to
be a liminal space. Transformative learning is described as being ‘charac-
terised by simultaneous restructuring in the cognitive, the emotional and
social-societal dimensions’. It is described as occurring ‘as the result of a
crisis-like situation’. Given this definition the phrase ‘transformative learn-
ing’ seems overused within both academia and industry, or at least occurs
less often than can be suggested (Dirkx, 1998). However if transformative
learning is viewed as a process by which a learner’s preconceived schema
are challenged in any one of the cognitive, emotional and social dimensions,
forcing the learner into a liminal space, then transformative learning may
be considered to describe a broader range of learning experiences.
In addition to the four learning levels Illeris introduces a diagrammatic
representation of the learning model, as two double headed arrows with the
individual at the intersection. The fully developed diagram is reproduced
in Figure 1.
11
acquistion
mentalCbalancemeaningability
interCCCaction
integration
ENVIRONMENT
EMOTION
SENSIBILITYFUNCTIONALITY
SOCIALITY
COGNITION
SOCIETY
Figure 1: The processes and dimensions of learning (Reproduced from Illeris(2003))
12
Within the learning model Illeris identifies two reasons why intended
learning may not be realised. Defence may be seen as a passive sifting
or coping mechanism. It is accepted that ‘nobody can manage to remain
open to the gigantic volumes of influences we are all’ exposed to. Defence
is linked with the concept of everyday consciousness where the learner uses
preconceptions of thematic areas of knowledge to decide how to respond
to new influences. Resistance may be seen as an active process where the
learner interrogates new influences or knowledge. Illeris comments that
‘great steps forward in the development of mankind and society have taken
place when someone did not accept a truth or way of doing or understand-
ing things’. When discussing transformative learning Illeris is influenced
by the work of Mezirow (Mezirow, 2009) who draws a clear distinction
between instrumental and communicative learning, characterising the for-
mer as hypothetical deductive and the later as analogical abductive, where
communicative discourse is associated with judgement. The two modes of
learning can be compared to quantitative and qualitative learning, often
used to distinguish between engineering and the sciences, and arts and the
humanities.
2.4 Learning and teaching within the disciplines
Biglan (1973a, 1973b) followed by Kolb (1981) demonstrated differences
between university subjects or disciplines, suggesting that learning styles
differed between the disciplines. Based on a multidimensional analysis of
academics’ judgement of the similarities of subject matter in different sub-
ject areas, Biglan (1973a) classified subjects according to three different
dimensions, with a fourth dimension introduced based on analysis of data
from a liberal arts college in addition to that from the University of Illinois.
The paradigm dimension provides an indication of the degree to which the
discipline relies on paradigm, considered as a body of theory which is sub-
scribed to by members of a discipline (Kuhn, 1962). This dimension is often
used to distinguish the natural sciences and engineering from social sciences
and the humanities. Biglan describes the dimension, in what could be con-
sidered a divisive manner, as ‘hard-soft’ (Biglan, 1973b). The application
dimension provides an indication of whether a discipline is considered to be
concerned with application to practical problems (‘pure-applied’). The life
systems dimension provides an indication of whether a discipline is consid-
ered to be concerned with life systems (‘life systems - non-life systems’).
The creative dimension provides an indication of whether a discipline is
considered to be creative or empirical (‘creative-empirical’). This dimen-
sion was not identified through those subjects studied at the university,
but was identified when examining the full range of subjects offered by
13
the liberal arts college. Civil engineering within Biglan’s analysis was con-
sidered to be hard, applied, more concerned with non-life systems than
life systems, and more creative than empirical. Biglan (1973b) also found
significant differences across the disciplines between social connectedness,
commitment with regard to teaching and research, and scholarly output.
Kolb (1981) introduces a dialectic learning model with similarities to
Jung’s (1921) concept of psychological types. Kolb describes learning as
based on a four stage cycle as illustrated in Figure 2 with the stages shown
opposite each other considered to be in dialectic tension between one an-
other.
Concrete experience
Formation of abstract
concepts and generalisations
Testing implications
of concepts in new situationsObservations and reflections
Figure 2: The experiential learning model (Reproduced from Kolb (1981))
The concrete-abstract tension is seen as cognitive development from a
phenomenalistic (concrete) view of the world to a constructivist (abstract)
view. The second tension is seen as a movement from an egocentric (active
testing) to an internalised integrative (reflective) form of knowledge. Jung’s
work is influential in the development of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI) which can be used to give an indication of personality types. This
is used amongst a number of other factors in selecting group members for
the Group Design Projects and is discussed further in Sections 3.3 and 4.8
of this dissertation.
In a similar approach to Biglan (1973a) different disciplines are cate-
gorised depending upon their position along each of these dialectic tensions.
Based on a large sample of 800 practising managers and graduate students
in management, Kolb found that, although the individuals shared the same
occupation, their learning styles, indicating their position on the concrete-
abstract and active-reflective dimensions, were associated with their under-
graduate majors. Based on a sample of 234 individuals, engineering was
placed close to the whole sample mean in both the concrete-abstract and
active-reflective dimensions, although ‘on the average fell into the conver-
gent quadrant’ where the four quadrants were: accommodators (concrete
active), divergers (concrete reflective), assimilators (abstract reflective) and
convergers (abstract active). Neither Biglan or Kolb report ranges which
give an indication of the variability of responses within a discipline. Kolb’s
learning model is seen as similar to the problem solving process (Kolb,
1976). Kolb (1981) revisits Biglan’s data seeing the concrete–abstract and
14
soft–hard dimensions, and the active–reflective and the applied–pure di-
mensions as equivalent. It is interesting to note that ‘concrete’ and ‘soft’
are seen as similar concepts in the categorisation of disciplines, although the
words themselves could also be seen as polar opposites in contexts such as
problem solving. Using this interpretation civil engineering as well as other
engineering disciplines are moved further into the active abstract (applied
hard) quadrant. As well as revisiting Biglan’s data, Kolb adapts data from
the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education 1969 study of American
colleges and universities. The interpretation of this data seems somewhat
arbitrary, with the active–reflective dimension based on academic faculty
consultancy activities and the concrete–abstract dimension based on two
questions on the relative importance of mathematics and the humanities to
a specific discipline. A discipline is considered to be concrete (soft) based
on a low importance of mathematics and a high importance of the human-
ities, and abstract (hard) based on a high importance of mathematics and
a low importance of the humanities. On this simplistic final analysis civil
engineering is moved close to the extreme of the active abstract (hard)
quadrant, while other engineering disciplines are moved to the extreme of
the abstract (hard) axis, apparently indicating the importance of mathe-
matics to the discipline of engineering to be higher than the importance
of mathematics to the discipline of mathematics. That the analysis allows
such ludicrous conclusions to be drawn is perhaps an indication of how
far removed it has become from the initial dimensional concepts expressed
by Biglan. These being the degree to which a subject relies on paradigm,
where paradigm as considered by Kuhn (1962) refers to a body of theory
that is subscribed to by all members of a field, and the application of a
discipline to practical problem solving. I question categorisation of disci-
plines in such a simplistic manner, although the concept that personality
types and learning styles vary within and across disciplines remains useful.
Kolb (1981), separately to the categorisation of disciplines, introduces
three levels of learning considered as development stages of the human
growth process, acquisition, specialisation and integration. He comments
that ‘specialisation extends through formal education or career training
and early experiences of adulthood in work and personal life . . . this stage,
in our thinking, terminates at mid career, although the specific chronology
of the transition to [integration] will vary widely from person to person
and from one career path to another’. In introducing levels of learning it
is suggested that development to each level is marked by ‘increasing com-
plexity and and relativism in dealing with the world and one’s experiences,
and by higher-level integrations of the dialectic conflicts between the four
primary adaptive modes’ (shown in Figure 2). Symbolic complexity, percep-
15
tual complexity, affective complexity and behavioural complexity are viewed
as being linked to development of abstract, reflective, concrete and active
stages respectively, with integration only achievable through experiential
learning taking place in all four stages of the cycle. Kolb envisages learning
development as taking place within a cone extending from the circular base
of the four stages of the learning cycle, extending due to increasing com-
plexity, transitioning across the three levels of learning towards an apex.
We are left with a contrast between Illeris’ and Kolb’s models of learning,
where one allows for the expansions of learning while one suggests that
learning closes towards a defined point. To me expansion seems the more
optimistic of the two visions, although both indicate that learners must be
active in striving for higher levels of learning.
Jarvis and others (Jarvis et al., 1998, Jarvis, 2009) find limitations with
Kolb’s learning cycle, commenting that it ‘is too simple to reflect the real-
ity of the complex social process of human learning’, while complimenting
Illeris’ more comprehensive theory. Although Jarvis arrives at an alterna-
tive learning model this may be considered to be too involved to allow the
novice learner to immediately recognise the various stages. Significantly
Jarvis sees learning as both an experiential and existential process, with
the learning process seen as encompassing more than the individual as a
thinker. Jarvis views learning as relating to three transformations, those
in which the person senses the world, those in which the person is changed
through experiencing the world, and those in which the person is changed
through social interaction. The manner in which the person experiences
and socially interacts with society are shaped by past learning. Similari-
ties can be drawn between the learning model presented by Jarvis and the
design, situated function—behaviour—structure (FBS) framework) model
presented by Gero and Kannengiesser (2004). Both models present iter-
ative processes, where the actual outcome is compared to the expected
outcome, with the learner and designer respectively, becoming more ex-
perienced as a result of the process, although the respective fields seem
to have developed isolated from each other in the literature. In the FBS
framework function, behaviour and structure consider the questions, ‘What
is it for?’, ‘What does it do?’ and ‘What is it?’ respectively.
Civil engineering can be considered to be at the interface between the
natural sciences and the social sciences. Civil engineers are expected to
have a strong grounding in mathematics and physics, as well as aspects
of material science, chemistry and biology, and should be able to apply
knowledge and understanding in these domains for the benefit of society.
It is often said that scientists observe and attempt to explain the world as
it is, while engineers manipulate the world for the benefit of society. When
16
speaking to colleagues, being an engineer has been compared to being an
artist whose works must must satisfy society as well as the artist them-
self. In the context of benefiting society there is an increasing emphasis
on preventing harm to one section of society in order to benefit another
section of society. This concept is embedded within the field of sustainabil-
ity, sometimes expressed as ‘people, planet, profit’. Engineering academics
and students often emphasise the differences between engineering and oth-
er disciplines, as well as the differences between the individual engineering
disciplines. Civil engineering may be considered to be the second oldest
engineering discipline, originally arising as a separate discipline to mili-
tary engineering. It is therefore a welcome development that an increasing
amount of educational research is being carried out within the academic
disciplines, recognising differences as well as similarities between them.
Kreber brings together a diverse range of contributors to examine learn-
ing and teaching within and beyond disciplines (Kreber, 2009a). The col-
lection is of particular interest as it contains several reactive chapters,
responses from educators to chapters written by educationalists, giving
practical relevance to the work discussed. While the distinction between
an educator and an educationalist might seem slight, I see it as important,
relating to the primary disciplinary perspective that each will approach
teaching and learning from. Kreber highlights that ‘there is now a growing
awareness that in a world characterised by rapid change, complexity and
uncertainty, problems do not present themselves as distinct subjects but
increasingly within transdisciplinary contexts, thereby calling for graduate
outcomes that go beyond specialist knowledge and skills . . . a key question
. . . is whether the teaching of specialised skills and knowledge in partic-
ular contexts can be balanced with the teaching of more ‘generic’ ones,
without compromising the integrity of academic programs on offer’. It is
emphasised that within a modern British university education:
Success is defined by students not only learning lots about a
subject, but knowing how they learned it and why what they
learned matters to their understanding of an interaction with
the world around them. As students acquire certain bodies of
knowledge, procedures, conceptual tools, practices and even val-
ues within the particular contexts of our various subjects, their
learning is context-specific but also ‘context-transcendent’. (em-
phasis in original). (Kreber, 2009b)
Disciplines have been part of the fabric of universities since their found-
ing in the middle ages. Students were expected to demonstrate competence
in the trivium of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric (concepts which remain
in some European education systems) prior to studying the quadrivium of
17
arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Upon completion of the triv-
ium and quadrivium students were awarded a Bachelor of the Arts degree
and were free to pursue study in what could be regarded as the professions
of the time. Hence universities prior to the nineteenth century were con-
sidered to provide an education which prepared students for professional
or vocational roles. The dual roles of the modern university in research
and education can be considered to have developed in Germany around
1810 when Wilhelm von Humboldt (then Prussian Minister of Education)
outlined his vision for the University of Berlin as an institution where both
teaching and research should take place. Within the civil engineering pro-
fession, the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in 1818 giving an
indication of its origins as a modern rather than ancient discipline and
one which has developed in response to industrialisation and the needs of
society.
Donald (2002) considers engineering to be, ‘Hard thinking: applying
structured knowledge to unstructured problems’, commenting that ‘in en-
gineering programs there is a continual tug-of-war between the theoretical
and the professional’. Engineering students are considered to be more
self-reliant and focused than students from arts and science programmes.
Engineering students ‘will have mathematical and physical science skills,
will be able to act on logical evidence, and will be able to work with
others’, while problem solving and design are frequently used to describe
the thinking processes required and developed on engineering programmes.
Through speaking with engineering academics Donald found that engineer-
ing students were expected to change their ways of thinking compared to
school: ‘whenever there is a way to go through school without thinking,
unfortunately that way is taken more often than not by most students’. In
a discussion with colleagues in the Department of Civil and Environmen-
tal Engineering about the prior mathematics knowledge of undergraduate
students it was felt that in the UK the school mathematics curriculum fo-
cuses on tricks to carry out particular procedures without setting these in
the context of the subject. The same academic quoted by Donald (2002)
comments:
I have students who have tremendous marks, and can memorise
everything, and they come in and show me that they can do
any number of problems. But when I ask them why are you
doing this step in this problem they respond “because that is
the way you did it.” When I ask them why do you think I did
it this way, or ask what if I gave you another problem that is
similar to this one and another one combined, but not exactly
either, the student usually responds, “I can’t do it because I
18
have never seen it before.” Their knowledge is all memorised
and there is no understanding, and what is worse is that there
is a tremendous fear even to consider how they would approach
a problem they have not seen before. (emphasis added)
This from experience seems to be one of the central issues that engi-
neering academics should and do attempt to address. On the one hand
engineering students and graduates must be well versed in the hard or
fixed paradigms of mathematics and physics, while on the other hand they
must be prepared to interrogate what they are taught and experience from
a similar perspective to those disciplines with soft or unfixed paradigms.
It struck me as curious that Donald (2009) states ‘one of the most dis-
quieting findings from these studies across disciplines is that students in
one program of study are experiencing a totally different education from
students in another’. I would find it disturbing if this was not the case,
the statement seems to undervalue the discipline specific contribution to
both learning and teaching. It could be considered disquieting however
if students and academics were unaware of the discipline specific nature
of learning and teaching. Matthew and Pritchard (2009) in response to
Donald (2009), also discussed in this work, have reservations about the
use of the hard-soft dimension to categorise disciplines, commenting that
“‘hard” and “soft” place a certain, though implicit value on the disciplines
. . . [which] are not helpful in promoting new thinking about the “how and
why” of teaching and learning within particular disciplines’.
Civil engineering courses in both the UK and North America have been
through, and continue to go through, change in order to develop students
beyond the technical foundations of engineering science. It is useful to
consider what barriers there might be to change and whether there is an
appropriate balance between specialist and generalist knowledge and skills
influences. Can change damage as well as benefit civil engineering as a
taught and professional discipline?
2.5 Agenda for change
In a series of reports the Royal Academy for Engineering (Spinks et al.,
2006, RAEng, 2007, 2010, 2012) has emphasised the need for changes to
undergraduate engineering degree courses in the UK and abroad. The
most recent of these reports focuses on the requirements for successful
change without detailing the specifics of what changes might be required.
While for engineering academics this could be interpreted as frustrating it
perhaps gives an indication of the vast range of engineering courses taught
in the UK and abroad, with specific suggestions for changes likely to have
relevance for specific subsets. The 2007 report states:
19
No factor is more critical in underpinning the continuing health
and vitality of any national economy than a strong supply of
graduate engineers equipped with the understanding, attitudes
and abilities necessary to apply their skills in business and other
environments.
Today, business environments increasingly require engineers who
can design and deliver to customers not merely isolated products
but complete solutions involving complex integrated systems.
Increasingly they also demand the ability to work in globally
dispersed teams across different time zones and cultures.
(RAEng, 2007, page 4)
While the 2012 report comments:
No profession unleashes the spirit of innovation like engineering.
Few professions turn so many ideas into so many realities. Few
have such a direct and positive effect on people’s everyday lives.
(RAEng, 2012, page 1)
In a recent TEDx talk2 by one of our undergraduate students, civ-
il engineering is described as the ‘essential profession’, highlighting that
engineers must engage with global debates, while society should welcome
engineers to these debates.
The pivotal role of engineers in society is increasingly recognised and
the agenda for educational change should focus on preparing engineer-
ing graduates for this. There is an agenda for change, however there are
circumstances that may prevent change from occurring. Just as there are
boundaries between the disciplines within a university there are boundaries
between academic and industrial disciplines that must be broken down in
order for change to occur. Reimann (2009) seeks to explore disciplines
through ways of thinking and practicing (WTP). The emphasis in WTP is
on academics being given the opportunity to reflect on, compare and con-
trast discipline specific practice, such that in their teaching they may make
the implicit, explicit. This can be compared to giving academics the op-
portunity to reflect on troublesome knowledge through the use of threshold
concepts within specific disciplines (Land et al., 2008). While the discus-
sion of threshold concepts may assist in the recollection of how specific
knowledge and understanding was developed, WTP may assist in the rec-
ollection of the attitudes and behaviours adopted in becoming part of the
professional engineering community. WTP resonates with the concept of
communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 2003) and could be considered
2TEDx talk available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOIJGGgaSIY
20
as shifting focus from teacher-centred teaching to student-centred teaching
while maintaining the teacher as the expert guiding the learner into society.
WTP is compatible with the development of learning partnerships as
a way of educating students for self-authorship and self-definition (Bax-
ter Magolda, 2002, 2009). Self-authorship can be viewed a similar to the
context of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) and academic motivation (Schunk,
1991, Zimmerman, 2000), although I argue it is presented in a more ap-
plicable context. Baxter Magolda (2009) makes clear that the majority of
students do not develop self-authorship until several years after they have
graduated, often going through difficult and challenging life experiences
before achieving a sense of self. It is suggested that:
A primary reason self-authorship remained elusive during col-
lege was the lack of emphasis on developing an internal sense
of self. Students learned disciplinary content and processes for
thinking about it and applying it. It was not until after college,
however, that their employers and graduate educators stressed
that their thinking, knowing, and applying their perspectives
to their work all hinged on their internal values and how they
defined themselves.
Baxter Magolda (2009) presents a learning partnerships model in which
learners are transitioned from support to challenge. At the support–challenge
interface two sets of paired principles and challenges seem particularly im-
portant: validating learners’ capacity to know, leading to acknowledgement
that the self is central to knowledge construction, and defining learning
as mutually constructing meaning, leading towards shared authority and
expertise. In my experience neither of these can be achieved without con-
ceptual change in the learner with the transition from requiring support
to embracing challenge sometimes seen in postgraduate research students.
This may be due to life experiences external to the university environment
as well as the extended nature of the challenge encountered within post-
graduate research degrees. Baxter Magolda includes a further principle
and challenge: situating learning in learners’ experience and portraying
knowledge as complex and socially constructed. Within the academic dis-
cipline of civil engineering both of these present particular challenges. Few
learners and not all teachers will have experience of civil engineering as
an industrial discipline, while there is a significant knowledge hurdle to be
overcome before learners can engage in social construction of knowledge.
However the concept of a knowledge partnership in a similar manner to
threshold concepts permits discussion of knowledge and culture between
teachers and learners allowing learning to be viewed as an enterprise or an
endeavour that is not at the extremes of either learner or teacher-centred
21
learning. In this respect self-authorship within an educational context is
interlinked with the concept of learners as self-regulated and self-directed
(Jarvis et al., 1998, Zimmerman, 2002). Teachers can support learners
in developing self-regulation by challenging them to arrive at solutions
through their own mental effort rather than by providing solutions for
them to work towards. Zimmerman (2002) comments ‘if a student fails to
understand some aspect of a lesson in class, he or she must possess the
self-awareness and strategic knowledge to take corrective action. Even if
it were possible for teachers to accommodate every student’s limitation at
any point during the school day, their assistance could undermine the most
important aspect of this learning — a student’s development of a capability
to self-regulate’.
In considering the agenda for change, which can be viewed as focus-
ing on bringing about conceptual change in the approaches adopted by
learners, consideration must also be given as to how change can be en-
acted by teachers, and whether industry and institution desire for change
can be reconciled with the competing responsibilities and motivations of
engineering academics. I believe it must be acknowledged that disciplines
and academics at research intensive universities, despite modest efforts to
the contrary, are arranged as territories and tribes (Trowler, 2009, Becher
and Trowler, 2001), with boundaries protected and defended, from both
a conceptual and physical perspective. The organisational structures of
research intensive universities, perhaps out of historical convenience, seem
unsuited to the development of an alternative more open culture, designed
to encourage rather than restrict transdisciplinary discussion. The cultures
of tribes and territories are influential across research, teaching and admin-
istration. Each academic discipline may be considered as a community of
practice with specific teaching and learning regimes (TLRs) (Fanghanel,
2009), hidden to those embedded within them, but becoming evident to
newcomers. On the macroscale this may appear to be a dismal scenario,
however it overlooks the relative freedom with which individual academics
and significant networks may act with at the microscale and mesoscale.
Significance networks as proposed by Roxa and Matensson (2009) may be
considered to be those networks formed through everyday open but pri-
vate conversations and dialogues between colleagues. They are unlikely
to be organised around a predefined hierarchical structure and are unlike-
ly to be overly influenced by public organisational statements of policy.
Significance networks have the potential to act as agents of change if ef-
fective approaches are made to engage with them at all levels within a
hierarchical organisational structure. The findings of one of the most re-
cent Royal Academy of Engineering reports (RAEng, 2012) support this
22
view alongside other critical features of success and failure in implementing
change. Civil engineering is both an academic discipline and a profession.
In addition to the boundaries observed between academic disciplines this
introduces a further potential barrier between academia and industry, one
that must be broken down if civil engineering degree courses are to remain
relevant to employers.
In choosing to interview industry focused engineering leaders prime
motivators were to assess what knowledge and understanding, skills and
attitudinal characteristics prospective employers seek in graduate civil en-
gineers and to what extent these are addressed within current curricula
at research intensive universities, as well as whether the specific mix of
characteristics was subject to change through career trajectories.
23
3 Methods
In conducting the research work discussed in this dissertation I took a prag-
matic orientation (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013) based on choosing
a methodology which seemed best aligned with the aims of the research. In
seeking conceptions of engineering leadership it seemed most appropriate
to seek the views of engineering leaders themselves. In order to provide a
rich text on which to base the analysis more quantitative methods such as
questionnaires were rejected in favour of a qualitative approach, taking the
form of semi-structured interviews. The work intends to provoke debate
over possible knowledge and understanding, skill and attitudinal character-
istics that may enable an individual to develop into an engineering leader.
It should assist those involved in civil engineering education in considering
the graduate skill-sets expected and required by industry. The research
was carried out based on a pragmatic approach (Ibid, ch 11) influenced
by modified and constructivist grounded theory approaches (Ibid, ch 12),
accepting that saturation was unlikely to be achieved within the scope of
the work. Following completion of the dissertation I plan to run a follow-
up focus group as well as investigating optimal approaches to embedding
industry involvement in educational practice.
During the course of the study it became apparent that there is an
interest in the distribution of personality types amongst undergraduate
engineering students (Shen et al., 2007). I considered that it would be in-
teresting to include anonymised MBTI data collected as part of a skills and
experience questionnaire carried out to assign students to groups during
the Group Design Projects, to assess whether desired graduate character-
istics showed correspondence or discord with recorded student personality
types.
3.1 Participant selection
Interview participants were selected based on their roles as engineering
leaders within renowned engineering and architectural consultancies (Arup,
Buro Happold, Expedition Engineering, Foster+Partners). All of the par-
ticipants were known to me beforehand due to their involvement with
group design exercises on the MEng Civil Engineering degree at Imperial
or through their involvement in other activities at the interface between
education and industry. In particular Mike Cook (Adjunct Professor of
Creative Design at Imperial College London) delivers a series of Creative
Design weeks to the first and second year civil engineering students on the
undergraduate course at Imperial College London, which together with the
Constructionarium (Ahearn et al., 2005), developed by Ed McCann (Roy-
24
al Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Innovation at University
College London) and others, is a prerequisite for the Group Design Projects
carried out in third year. The participants are also known to each other
independent of this research, with some involved in ongoing industry and
institution discussions on the concepts of how creative and innovative de-
sign should be taught to civil engineering undergraduates. As such this
work must be considered from the perspective of constructivist grounded
theory (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013, Ch 12) as part of an on-
going discussion between all of the participants, including myself. Five
interviews were conducted in total. Although this could be considered to
be a limited sample the number of potential participants is itself limited
due to deliberately targeted sampling of a rarefied group of individuals.
All of the participants were white males. This was not due to deliberate
sampling but is considered at this time to be representative of the majority
of engineering leaders.
3.2 Interviews
A semi-structured approach was adopted with an interview schedule (Ap-
pendix A) composed of a set of main questions with sets of follow-up ques-
tions. The main questions are set out below:
1. What civil engineering projects are you working on at the moment?
2. What career path did you take to get to your current job?
3. What do you understanding by the phrase ‘engineering leadership’?
4. How would you describe your role as a civil engineering leader?
5. When appointing a graduate civil engineer what characteristics do
you look for?
6. What do you think the role of universities is in developing civil engi-
neers?
7. What do you think the role of universities is in developing engineering
leaders?
8. Is there anything you would like to add?
The first two interview questions were designed to allow the participants
to consider their own skill-sets in the context of civil engineering projects
they were currently working on and their own career progression. Ques-
tions three and four sought to investigate their conceptions of engineering
leadership and how these aligned with their roles within their respective
firms. Questions five, six and seven were designed to assess the skill-sets
they thought recent graduates should possess and whether the concept of
25
engineering leadership should be addressed within the MEng curriculum.
Question eight was included to allow them to reflect on their thoughts and
revisit any part of the interview if desired. Follow-up questions were de-
signed to allow for particular areas of interest to be reflected on within the
interview subject to time constraints. Interviews were scheduled to last
a period of one hour, although in practice they ranged in length from 54
minutes to 106 minutes, with an average of around 70 minutes. All inter-
views were conducted face-to-face in meeting rooms at the offices of the
participants respective companies. When beginning each interview I took
care to emphasise that I was seeking the opinions and views of the inter-
viewee, and was careful not to introduce any prior conceptions that I held
except for those that were evident in the design of the interview schedule.
Responses to particular questions were revisited where time permitted to
seek clarification of opinions and views. Interviews were conducted with
varying periods of time between each, ranging from two days to one month.
This allowed some reflection in between each interview, with the focus of
follow-up questions in each interview varied based on perceived areas of
agreement and discourse.
Prior to the interview all participants were sent a participant informa-
tion sheet (Appendix B) as well as a participant consent form (Appendix
C).
3.3 MBTI data collection
For the past four years four questions have been included in the skills
and experience survey, completed by all students prior to commencing the
Group Design Projects, which are considered to be suggestive of a Myers-
Briggs personality type3. In the context of the Group Design Projects this
information is used to avoid a dominance of a single personality type within
a group, although further analysis has not been carried out prior to now.
This year groups were informed of the personality types of their members,
as students expressed an interest, that this could be useful in developing an
understanding of group dynamics. For each of the four questions students
are asked to position themselves on a ten point Likert scale between two
statements. The statements are repeated below with the MBTI dimensions
they are suggested to relate to shown in parenthesis. The dimensions are
not indicated in the questionnaire. The underlined letters are then com-
bined to give one of sixteen different personality types. There are many
criticisms of the MBTI itself, and while the use of just four questions to
assign an MBTI is not standard practice, it may be considered justified
given the potential survey fatigue suffered by undergraduate students.
3en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
26
Place yourself on the SCALE between the two statements. The
nearer you place yourself to one of the statements indicates how
much you think that statement is representative of you:
• I like to...
meet new people and take action. (Extrovert).
reflect on my thoughts and ideas. (Introvert).
• I trust the...
tangible and like the specific details. (Sensing).
abstract and like to generalise a pattern. (Intuition).
• I make decisions...
through detached, rational and logical thought. (Thinking).
by getting a feel for the situation and looking for consensus.
(Feeling).
• I prefer to...
have matters settled. (Judging).
keep decisions open. (Perceiving).
3.4 Ethical considerations
Ethical approval was sought and obtained following minor amendments
through the Education Ethics Review Process (EERP). The approved
ethics application is included as Appendix D. As the interview participants
were not students or colleagues potential power issues are minimised, al-
though a potential power issue of believed influence over the curriculum
was identified this was not observed during any of the interviews. No
incentives were offered for being a participant in the study.
A significant variation from a standard ethics application was the in-
clusion of an option for the participant’s contribution to be acknowledged.
This was included to recognise the time spent by the participants con-
tributing to the work, and as discussed in the ethics application, has the
potential to add legitimacy and validation to the study on the occasion
that its findings are presented within Imperial or to a wider audience such
as the engineering institutions. All participants indicated that they wished
their contribution to the study to be acknowledged or that they did not
mind whether it was acknowledged or not. Specific quotes, opinions and
views have been anonymised in this dissertation in accordance with the
ethics application, participant information sheet and participant consent
form. Participant contributions are recognised in the acknowledgements.
Although specific ethics approval was not sought for use of the MBTI
data, this was fully anonymised prior to being analysed as part of the
study, with the original data collected as part of a questionnaire designed
27
to improve the student experience during the Group Design Projects.
3.5 Analysis
Interviews were recorded using a digital voice recorder, which was checked
for audio clarity prior to conducting the interviews. Transcripts of the in-
terview recordings were obtained from commercial transcribers (UK Tran-
scription) to level three verbatim, which includes pauses, ums and ers and
false starts. These were checked for accuracy against the original recording
by myself and any necessary corrections were made. Corrections were found
to be minor, mainly relating to specific acronyms or company names. The
corrected transcripts were then read once in their entirety without com-
menting, before being read for a second time highlighting specific passages.
The transcripts were read for a third time and codified according to the
a priori identified themes of core knowledge and understanding, practical
experience including group working, deep and broad thinking, creativity
and leadership. Following this the transcripts were read for a fourth time
and codified based on additional conceptions, agreement and discourse.
Specific passages were marked with index tabs to aid recall. All analysis
was carried out by hand on printouts of the transcripts. Transcripts were
read in a different order each time to promote concept comparison. Addi-
tional hand written notes were kept at each stage of the analysis process,
with specific keywords highlighted and grouped under common conceptions
during the final two readings of the transcripts. Where quotes are taken
from the transcripts these are assigned a participant number (assigned at
random prior to the analysis). Samples of an annotated transcript and
loose leaf analysis notes are shown in Appendix E.
Data for each of the four MBTI questions was analysed by adjusting
the ten point Likert score to a normalised (-1 → +1) scale. Results are
reported for each dimension as well as combined dimension type indicators.
28
4 Results and discussion
It is not possible to report the full extent of the analysis of the interview
transcripts carried out, within the scope of this dissertation, although the
main conceptions relating to engineering education, engineering leadership,
and the engineering design process are developed. Through the selection
of certain quotations I have tried to give an indication of what can be
considered as effective but also what can be considered as ineffective in
each of these areas. Minor changes have been made to the quotes to remove
pauses, ums and ers, and false starts, unless these were considered to add
context to the quote.
It was found that the process of becoming an engineer, which seems
sensible to consider to be the aim of engineering education, or developing
engineering thinking could be viewed from knowledge, skills, attitudes and
experience perspectives. The first three of these are discussed in the con-
text of gaining vocational competence by Baartman and Bruijin (2011).
Although these perspectives cannot be fully disentangled from each other
I believe there is a value in examining to what extent university education
addresses each of them. It is evident that the knowledge perspective is of-
ten given elevated status when considering engineering curricula, although
specific knowledge topics were rarely discussed during the interviews. This
may be due to the nature of the interview questions but is considered to
indicate that engineering education should engage with each of the per-
spectives. The concept of engineering as a design process requiring specific
skills developed primarily from one of the interviews, although confirma-
tion was found in the transcripts of all five interviews. Interpretation of the
interview transcripts also suggested that civil engineering could be viewed
as a discipline in which there is a high knowledge barrier to overcome be-
fore graduates can engage with discipline specialists, as well as engaging
with other disciplines through the lens of their domain.
All participants made a distinction between infrastructure engineering
(considered as civil engineering) and building engineering, covering struc-
tural engineering as well as a range of other engineering specialities, which
I had not anticipated prior to the interviews. In the context of the civil en-
gineering degree at Imperial aspects of both distinct disciplines are taught.
The interviews tended to focus on building rather than infrastructure en-
gineering, which could be a result of the selection of the participants by
myself, with my teaching and research covering structural and biomechan-
ical engineering, meaning that I have developed an interest in structure
and architectural form.
29
4.1 Knowledge
In the interview questions participants were encouraged to consider deep
and broad thinking as well as creativity. Thinking seemed to be taken as
equivalent to knowledge and understanding. Deep thinking was associated
with core knowledge and understanding, while broad thinking was asso-
ciated with more practical activities and group working. Creativity often
seems to be associated with broad thinking as opposed to deep thinking.
However most of the participants focused on what I have previously de-
scribed as informed creativity (Phillips, 2012), seeing both deep and broad
thinking contributing to a creative process.
Interviewees had various conceptions of the meaning of creativity, with
several commenting that engineering was by definition a creative activity.
The process of having ideas, or ideation had greater resonance:
I don’t find creativity a desperately helpful concept. I’m much
happier with the notion of ideation, which is how to have an
idea . . . so if you take the skill of having an idea, I know how
to have an idea, I think that’s a very important skill . . . an idea
is simply a mental response to a series of stimuli. [. . . ] Now,
if you are someone who has a preponderance of let’s say deep
thinking skills, and let’s say a lack of general knowledge, then
your ability to have ideas is quite constrained, more constrained
for example than in people who have a broad knowledge. Why?
Because they’re drawing on a broader set of potential stimuli
responses, and you can really see this in — top quality designers
for instance are notable eclectic personalities. (P04)
I think creativity, for me, creativity is a really delicate thing.
I think you can crush it. You can’t — you can’t entice it out
of people. [. . . ] you invite people to come forward with ideas.
It’s — ideas is a proxy for creativity, isn’t it? I think if you ask
people for ideas it seems easier than saying “Can you — can
you please be creative”, you know? (P05)
I’m looking for them [universities] to teach pure engineering that
can involve creativity because engineering is creative. That’s not
even a question, I find people spend far too long asking them-
selves that. It seems extraordinary. They create everything
. . . everything, so the notion that it’s not, it’s just, I think we’re
getting a little bit, or maybe we’re always a bit over excited
about the notions of status and celebrity. There’s an NCE cam-
paign about why don’t we have engineers on TV, this stuff is all
digression in my opinion. I don’t mind about any of this stuff,
30
I’m much more interested in we just do our profession well.
(P02)
Although knowledge in a manner that could be considered as a taxon-
omy was generally not touched upon during the interviews one participant
raised the concept of guild knowledge, seen as occupying the bottom two
layers of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956).
. . . if you look at Bloom’s taxonomy of knowledge, the lower two
levels are very definitive knowledge, can you recognise it, do you
know what it’s called? . . . “Oh, that’s what it does”. It’s easy
knowledge to acquire and it turns out to be critical in my view,
to the effective solution of engineering type problems. (P04)
The same participant described their initial experience of starting work
as a graduate:
I knew how to solve certain sorts of rather hard sums and pro-
gramming, and I could do various other things, but I didn’t
know, metaphorically speaking, the difference between a ham-
mer and a screwdriver. So I think that sort of knowledge turns
out to be very, very important and it served me extremely well.
(P04)
As well as commenting:
Don’t need to worry you guys at university because you don’t
need to show students what a bulldozer is, they can figure that
out in their own time. We’ve just got to put the information
resources there in a way that they use them, which allows you to
get on with the higher Bloom knowledge functions which relate
to the why, when and how to. (P04)
Relating these comments to the undergraduate degree at Imperial it is
easy to believe that the acquisition of guild knowledge represents a gap
in the education system between school and university level. It is not the
type of knowledge that is covered within the first and second year struc-
tural mechanics course for example, although will be touched on within the
design courses. It is knowledge that may be considered of too basic a level
to be discussed within the main curriculum of an undergraduate degree,
while at the same time being unfamiliar to those studying mathematics
or the pure sciences at school level. A very recent report by the Royal
Academy of Engineering (Lucas et al., 2014) highlights the failure of the
school curriculum to develop engineering habits of mind, many of which
can be seen to be echoed in this dissertation, or encourage thinking like an
31
engineer. Games such as Engineering Mastermind4 form part of an indus-
try response to provide guild knowledge outside of the main curriculum of
an undergraduate degree. The Constructionarium (Ahearn et al., 2005),
a week long site based experience undertaken by students at Imperial and
several other universities can also be considered as focused on acquiring
guild knowledge of the construction process. In my view the acquisition of
guild knowledge can be considered within the context of Kolb’s learning cy-
cle (Kolb, 1976) in combination with the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy
of knowledge (Bloom, 1956).
There was a tension between the responses of several of the other par-
ticipants, suggesting that an MEng undergraduate degree rarely provided
sufficient deep knowledge and understanding for them to consider appoint-
ing candidates at the time of graduation, although increasingly candidates
were identified through involvement with companies while completing their
undergraduate studies. This is discussed in more detail in Sections 4.4
and 4.7.
Several of the participants discussed the notion of ‘T’ or ‘multi-T’
shaped people as making for ideal engineers, where the vertical compo-
nent was seen as deep knowledge and the horizontal component was seen
as broad knowledge:
. . . so we have a sort of model of multi-T personalities, and we
think that the most successful engineers are those who have a
good breadth and at least one area of deep knowledge. And
there’s a very particular reason for that and it is this, that the
skill set or the thinking skill and the processes that are asso-
ciated with what we loosely call deep knowledge are different.
They require levels of concentration, levels of determination and
individual focus which are not characteristic of the other stuff
[. . . ] now those of us who have acquired, at one stage or an-
other, a degree of specialist knowledge, know what it means. It
doesn’t mean everything and it means considerably more than
nothing. (P04)
It comes back to the T-shaped person, because the engineering
is the deep expertise, let’s say. I think that’s fundamental.
(P05)
One the participants saw broad and deep learning as a parallel process,
with other participants discussing ‘T’ shaped people as having to develop
along both the horizontal and vertical components.
4www.engineeringmastermind.org
32
I think it’s essential that the design and delivery tools, so your
technical skills and your ability, your experience in delivering
keeps pace with your input to the development of conceptions.
In other words, you cannot have a career path where you only
develop concepts [. . . ] I think you have to kind of focus on
making sure one doesn’t get ahead of another. (P02)
In my experience specific learning models are rarely discussed either by
academics or industrialists in the context of engineering education. The
notion of a T-shaped person with both breadth and depth of knowledge is
on abrupt examination pictorially similar to the learning model proposed
by Illeris (2003) (see Figure 1), although both breadth and depth relate
to the cognition dimension. In the explanation of the cognition, emotion
and environment dimensions, expanding out from the self, I believe Illeris’
learning model has the potential to be used in discussion between academics
and industrialists, in an adapted form perhaps based on the dimensions
presented in this dissertation, although direct mapping between these and
Illeris’ model is problematic. Kolb’s learning cycle is perhaps too simplistic,
with the full learning model perhaps both too complex and too formulated
or mechanistic to be used in such a manner.
Although the concept of T or multi-T shaped people was widely ac-
knowledged by the participants this does not seem to be something that
is explicitly reflected in learning model research, although it is commented
on in research on implementing educational policy (Rip, 2004). The no-
tions of T-shaped people and design thinking (Brown and Wyatt, 2010)
have emerged from presentations by and interviews with Tim Brown, the
Chief Executive Officer at IDEO5, an international design consultancy. In
describing T-shaped people there is a strong sense that the metaphors of
broad and deep may be extended to the skills and attitudes, as well as the
knowledge dimensions.
Although I have taken knowledge and thinking to be equivalent it must
be acknowledged that thinking, and in particular thinking like an engi-
neer, requires a wider array of attributes than knowledge alone. In the
subsequent sections on skills, attitudes and experience I have attempted to
highlight those attributes which were seen as crucial from the interviews.
4.2 Skills
The interviews revealed a large number of skills or behaviours that could
be considered as essential to the practice of engineering, beyond the a priori
concepts of broad and deep knowledge and creativity. These included the
5www.ideo.com/uk/
33
the abilities to communicate, collaborate, challenge, and convince.
4.2.1 Communication and collaboration
Collaboration and communication were listed as key skills by all of the
participants, with specific examples of their importance indicated:
. . . we tend to think of depth and breadth and you know, all of
this T-shaped people and that stuff, is something we talk about
then we have . . . [this] third element of creativity . . . is there a,
kind of fourth quality? . . . I can’t think of a better word than
collaborativeness. . . . to be creative and highly specialist or to
be creative and highly broad, you could still perhaps not be
collaborative . . . without that ability to share and communicate
it amongst. You’re not doing that much good. (P01)
I think collaboration is extremely important. The emphasis
I’d make is from the position of an informed stance on your
own discipline . . . I really sort of emphasise that because I’m
concerned, in the UK, that we might be letting that go slightly.
(P02)
. . . we have a whole series of different skills that we look at, from,
you know, knowledge skills and experience, thinking and deci-
sion making, planning and organising, communication. Team
working and leadership. Commercial awareness. Ability to
build relationships. We look at a spectrum of traits. (P05)
4.2.2 Challenge
The skill of challenging was seen both as the an ability to challenge yourself,
but also as an ability to challenge or interrogate others, making sure that
the optimal solution as opposed to one that was just good enough was
achieved. Distinctions were drawn between good and ordinary engineering
and between competency and excellence. It was frequently mentioned in
the context of leadership:
Some leaders just want to sort of whip up the enthusiasm, open
the door, stuff everyone in the room, tell everybody to sort of
work together and expect that it’s going to be okay. But actually
it does need to be something more interactive that that . . . so
if you’ve got a specialist . . . who’s been working in that field
for 25 years . . . you’ve got to be the person probing, you know,
“What is that? Why is that? Why is it like it? How could it be
different? Is that the only way to do it? Why have you made
34
those assumptions? Where have those ideas come from? Has
anyone else got any —?” You know, you’ve got to interrogate
all the time. (P05)
I think your agenda for a project becomes more ambitious be-
cause you said, “Well I’ve done that, so how do we make this
better?”. Because you can’t make it only as good as the last
project. So, “When can, how can we make this more interesting
for everybody and for us and better for the client?”. (P01)
Several of the participants were concerned that specialisation could be
seen as ‘taking the easy route’, thus not challenging oneself to expand the
range of influences that you were exposed to:
Human beings, even broad thinkers, have a tendency to allow
themselves to become specialists. You know, society tends to
sort of segregate into silos of expertise, and even within those
silos, when you’ve got a broad thinking, they, they just permit
themselves to get blinkered and they, — I think you get reward,
society rewards specialism. The better you become at a thing,
the more responsibility, the higher your grade, the more your
money. The bigger and more exciting projects you work on.
You know, you have more responsibility in meetings. It feels
good, you’re making progress. (P05)
There was discord with one of the participants suggesting that gradu-
ates were often focused on ‘grabbing experiences’ (P03) that were seen as
increasing their employability and fulfilling the criteria of obtaining char-
tered status, changing the culture of an organisation. All participants ex-
pressed concern that a generalist approach from graduates could be symp-
tomatic of a lack of deeper knowledge and understanding, a failure to
overcome a knowledge barrier:
Creativity can shine out of people when they interview. But
then they might also be a bit flaky, you know, technically flaky
. . . you should have a mix, and if you homogenise it too much,
that’s probably not healthy. (P05)
I consider that creativity in engineering only comes from the
sufficient technical prowess and then curiosity. So it’s a combi-
nation, for me, of can you deliver on what you say you’ve con-
ceived because if not that’s fine, but then you’re in the realm of
a more, call it, theoretical designer . . . if you can’t find a way of
delivering on what you’re drawing, it doesn’t invalidate it, but
it isn’t engineering, for me. And the particular point I would
35
emphasise is that leads me to be keen in education, to make sure
people stay focused on their technical skills. I see a big variation
of that in the UK. I see some people who move off quickly into,
what I call, management decisions, which kind of masquerade
as creativity, but I think are more logical thinking. (P02)
We became concerned that we were slightly too dull so we start-
ed looking for people who fronted up with a sort of like a, I don’t
know, like a quirky or interesting or extreme personalities. That
was pretty much an unmitigated disaster because the sort of
people we were seeing were much better at talking about them-
selves and their dreams than they were actually about being
engineers. And so what we would find is we’d get them in and
it was just very hard to use them, to deploy them, get a day’s
work out of them or get them through the process. (P04)
4.2.3 Convince
The skill of convincing can be considered as combining the other three
skills. At the leadership level it can be seen as convincing the client that
your firm is the one that should be awarded the project. At the graduate
level it can be seen as convincing the team that your part of the project is
optimal:
What characterises a lot of the work we do is you, you don’t
win them unless you can convince someone that you’re going to
be able to deliver them . . . it tends to be that you’re up against
international gangs of people who are notable for their track
record and their ability to inspire a certain level of confidence
in the choice maker, the client, who decides to give you the job
or not. (P04)
. . . it’s something I try and tell all of the people when I talk
to them in practice, an important part of your job is to have a
vision for the project that you are working on, set a goal, what is
it you want to achieve from the project, even if you haven’t got
ultimate guiding power as an overarching leader, perhaps you’re
leading a piece. You need to, leaders need to have agendas: they
need to have something they want to achieve, not just drift with
the flow. That’s — I think that’s one of the important points for
leaders, they’re at the front, they’re showing the way and you
can’t show the way unless you have an idea of what the way is.
So I try and encourage everyone to have that view, so when you
join a project what is it that you want to achieve? (P01)
36
4.3 Attitudes
The interviews revealed a number of attitudes, characteristics or traits,
which could be considered as implicit rather than explicit skills, related to
how an individual works within a social and society setting, in particular
when developing relationships within a teams as well as with collaborators
from other groups. In describing them as attitudes I am not suggesting
that they cannot be developed, but that for some people they may repre-
sent a natural way of working, while for others time must be put aside to
develop them. The attitudes of curiosity, courage, respect and reflection
were commented on across all of the interviews.
4.3.1 Curiosity
Curiosity emerged as the characteristic or attitude most looked for in en-
gineering graduates:
What you need to do is keep looking, keep researching your
area, keep investigating, keep learning things. Stay open, and
then you will pick those things up, but the notion of engineering
intuition, as I say, in my view is engineering knowledge, and then
time and curiosity. (P02)
I think inherently they are, they are curious. I mean they
wouldn’t be engineers if they weren’t curious and trying to un-
derstand things and how things work and I mean, it’s, it’s some-
thing that I think you’re challenging, the conventional wisdom
as well as using experience of two rivalling systems, and out
of it comes a more unusual, although the better way of doing
things. (P03)
There is quite an interesting educational challenge in getting
people to be curious as well, you know, if they’re not already cu-
rious, how are you going to make them more curious? [. . . ] And
there is something about creating a mental framework where it’s
understood or at least it’s felt that when you behave curiously
good things happen. (P04)
So, I think you want somebody who’s got good physics, good
maths, a good sort of scientific mind, but you want a problem
solver, and you want a broad thinker, and you want somebody
who can — who has curiosity. So I do think that the broader,
softer skills are really important. (P05)
37
4.3.2 Courage
Courage can be seen along with challenge as the difference between ordi-
nary and good engineering, or between competence and excellence. Engi-
neers are necessarily focused on ensuring the safety and efficacy of anything
that they are responsible for designing. Hence there is a tension between
safety and risk in design. There is a sense that society does not expect engi-
neers to take risk. In my view society can be overly critical when mistakes
are considered to have been made.
. . . you have to have a, kind of, a little bit of courage and a little
bit of experience I suppose and quite a lot of, “I want it to work,
because I think this is the right, this is going to be what this
building needs” . . . I mean we often call that courage. (P01)
There was a sense that good engineers had the courage to go against
consensus:
. . . leaders need to have agendas, they need to have something
they want to achieve, not just drift with, with the flow.
(P01)
. . . try and identify as much of the problem as possible, in order
to come up with the best solution to as much of the problem.
So the more people you can consult with — but you also can’t
get consensus. (P05)
4.3.3 Respect
Respect was seen in the context of collaborating with those outside your
own discipline. In combination with courage it was often referred to in the
context of working with architects. In one of the subsets of questions I
asked ‘What do you think is the difference between an engineering (leader)
and an architect?’ with the responses relevant in my view to all engineers,
whether they are involved in leadership or not, with all participants having
an engineering education. Respect in the context of engineering leadership
is discussed further in Section 4.5.
In commenting on how discipline specific experts collaborate it is clear
that each needs to respect the process that the other has been through to
acquire their expertise, but also have the courage to challenge them:
. . . which means I both respect people who’ve been through the
process, but I also understand it doesn’t mean everything.
(P04)
38
The combination of respect and courage allowed for effective collabo-
ration between engineers and architects, recognising the discipline specific
expertise each bought to the table. In considering distinctions between
engineers and architects these were seen as small but significant, relating
to the education of each discipline.
I see them as distinct, and I am entirely — that makes it sound
more certain than it’s supposed to. I’m happy with that dis-
tinction. I think, it is interesting that I take the position of
my discipline. What is the structural response to this question?
So then I’ve informed the debate because I’ve bought some in-
formation to it. [. . . ] The really exciting bit is when you say,
“But you could do this, oh that’s amazing”. A when you work
with people from other disciplines, who can bounce off that, and
they say “Oh that’s very interesting. Well if we can do that, why
don’t we do this?”. In other words, they come back with anoth-
er idea, so it’s not, “Oh well that’s all about the engineering”.
They bounce off it, they come back with another idea, you chew
that around. (P02)
One participant commented on the value that both disciplines bought
to the engineering design process:
I so value the push from the architect on me to try harder or
the push from the architect to see something that “I haven’t
seen”, an opportunity, so that I honestly believe that architects
have made my engineering better and the end results better,
but I also think that an architect who listens to an engineer can
also recognise, does recognise that they are going to get a better
result. (P01)
Commenting on how advances in computational modelling allowed en-
gineers to have an increasing role in building design:
. . . engineers are all getting better at putting numbers to what
architects used to do by, “It worked last time so it will work
now”. We are now able to say, “Well, actually you can optimise
performance”. [Previously] there weren’t the tools available to
allow us to look at the more interactive part of human beings
with the building and we weren’t able to assess how happy peo-
ple would be in the building. [. . . ] We can now put numbers and
evidence against what used to be the well, the architecture used
to, the architect used to say, “Well, I’ve done this before, my in-
telligence and experience tells me this will work, trust me”. We
39
can now say as engineers, “We can model it and we can improve
it”, and we can actually say, you know, “there are better ways of
doing it”. So the engineer starts to occupy or starts to optimise
what used to be, what the architect used to be relied upon to
do. [. . . ] is that a threat to architects? I mean I’m not sure
because I think architects are intelligent people and they’ve had
a prejudice against getting involved in numbers, but through
computers, numbers, you don’t touch numbers, you touch com-
puter models. (P01)
Several of the participants saw the distinctions as small but important,
bringing diversity to the design process, and highlighted problems that
could occur when there was a lack of distinction.
[The difference], probably a philosophical perspective, so real-
ly, so really not much, actually. It’s paper thin these days.
There is a difference and I think it is probably a perspective. So
architects might be trying to answer a slightly different set of
questions. [. . . ] the engineer is, is obviously answering questions
of robustness, and durability, and efficiency, and effectiveness.
The architect might be answering questions of cultural fit, you
know, impact. You know, visual impact on the environment.
Behavioural impact on the people in the building. But I think
there’s, you know, the answers to both of those questions over-
lap, a really good — you know, the best architects are better
than some of the engineers I know. And some of the engineers I
know are better than a lot of the — than some of the architects,
I should say.
[. . . ]
I don’t know what makes that perspective . . . I think [it] some-
how comes through their education . . . one lot doing a load of
maths and physics, and the other lot doing a lot of, you know,
philosophy and art historical study . . . But then, you know, as
you go through your career, I think, I think you educate yourself
back again.
[. . . ]
some of the worst projects I’ve done are where the architects
are so weak, they just look to the engineer for the solution, and
then they, quite literally, execute whatever the engineering ideas
are. (P05)
As far as I’m concerned, architecture is a subset of engineer-
ing. Where engineering, certainly engineering is understood as
40
modifying the physical world for the use and benefit of all, then
architecture . . . they are essentially going through an identical
process . . . what differentiates us in terms of that process is the
knowledge domains we exercise it on and the particular tech-
niques we adopt. [. . . ] I expect them to be rather better at
making judgements of a subjective nature about aesthetic mer-
its or the way that people will experience space . . . in buildings
the architect is cast as the lead designer traditionally, in infras-
tructure the engineer is cast as the lead designer.
[. . . ]
my experience is actually the most ineffective teams in the early
ideation phase, you couldn’t tell who was the architect and who
was the engineer or indeed who was the client. (P04)
One participant highlighted an additional role in modern construction,
that of the project manager, often appointed by the client, whose motiva-
tion and attitudes could be different from those of the lead engineer and
lead architect:
A third element in the leadership of big projects, and so you,
you know, you get a [contractor] or somebody coming in, and
in many ways it’s devalued the role of the architect, and the
engineer, because he’s sitting there saying, “Well, you know, I
want it done this way”. Or the architect’s saying, “I want it done
this way”. And, the project manager is kind of saying, “Well,
you know, you do realise if you paint it this colour, it’s going to
be cheaper”. (Laughter) And so, you know, some decisions can
be taken away from engineer and architect, on the basis that,
you’ve got this project manager in the role. Cheaper or quicker
or whatever, it’s, you know it’s, because, he again has got some
different, a different set of values . . . a different agenda, because
you know, he’s perhaps on a bonus if he delivers the project on
time and on budget. (P03)
In the context of the Group Design Projects, those participants who
have been involved with them recalled concerns regarding the simplistic
way in which architecture was viewed as a discipline within the projects,
with students expected to take on the roles of engineers and architects. I
think this illustrates the danger of suggesting to engineering students that
they should see themselves as being able to do everything, rather than
having an appreciation of other disciplines. It has made me consider ways
in which good architectural collaboration and communication can be em-
bedded within the projects, something also discussed by the participants:
41
I remember when I was a young engineer, it was recognised
by some of the leaders then, that the young engineers weren’t
ever given the opportunity to sit there and collaborate with
architects, to see what could happen. [. . . ] I made this comment
to you about, you know, the design course, would be really good
to collaborate on some of the projects with some architectural
schools, to get the engineers to bring that aspect out. Because,
you know some of the design projects really require that artistic
creativity, that perhaps an architect can bring. (P03)
That the notion of understanding everybody’s process, which is
good, might eclipse the fact that you really should be an expert
in yours, and you should keep worrying yourself about whether
you are. In other words, it’s not a position of security.
[. . . ]
I have to say that one of the things I noticed in the third year
projects that the architectural position, design position, was
incredibly basic. I mean, really, really, really, really basic . . . I
actually felt that the people supervising them just should have
been more clear that that just wasn’t acceptable. [. . . ] You
should at least get past that because if you go into work with
that, you know, you’re really very early. So I think even a little
bit of that would move people past that stage. (P02)
I should be clear that these comments are about improving the process
and should not be seen as detracting from what the students achieve on the
Group Design Projects, but I think it emphasises the need for academics
and industrialists to have respect for other disciplines and to establish
ways of working with those from other disciplines. In the context of sig-
nificance networks (Roxa and Matensson, 2009) and learning and teaching
regimes (Fanghanel, 2009) this is not something that will happen outside
of pockets of excellence without support across multiple levels of both aca-
demic and industrial organisations.
4.3.4 Reflection
Reflection in particular may be considered as both an attitude and a skill.
It was frequently mentioned in the context of leadership but also in the
context of career trajectories. Reflection is not something that seems to be
encouraged as part of most courses on the undergraduate degree, although
I think it is an attitude that is beneficial, either after a particular stage of
a process, or at the end of a process. It was evident from the interviews
that the participants critically reflect on each project to see if improvement
42
could be made and if changes could be adopted for similar projects in the
future:
So when you build something, you finish it, everybody’s, you
know, it’s always like, “Oh, isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it great? Isn’t
it —?”. You know, that’s fine, have a few minutes of that, but
really, what you need to be doing is getting down to, is it good
enough? Could it have been better? What didn’t work out so
well? What are the — you know, that’s a crucial part of it.
And then, you know, was the process any good? Did — could
we have done the process better? How would we do the process
differently next time? I think those questions are fundamental.
(P05)
It can be seen from the quote that there is reflection on the outcome
but also on the process, suggesting double loop learning as proposed by
Argyris (Argyris, 1999, ch 3). In the context of the individual, van Wo-
erkom et al. (2002) discuss critical reflective behaviour. I believe we should
encourage our students to adopt this behaviour although the current sys-
tem of assessment does not provide sufficient opportunity to do this. In
the majority of courses students sit examinations, either at the end of the
course or the end of the year, with little opportunity to reflect on the
outcome of their examinations (the marks) or their own revision process.
While continuous assessment on the Group Design Projects provides some
opportunity for reflection there is no formal process of allowing students
to reflect on what changes they might make if faced with a similar project
in the future.
Several of the participants described the cultures of their companies.
The culture of a company is most clearly represented in attitudes displayed
by its leaders and staff. This is something clearly put forward in Ove
Arup’s Key Speech (1970) which may loosely be interpreted as project,
people, planet, where project relates to ensuring the optimal project for
the client, people relates to ensuring that a companies staff are motivated
and essentially happy in their work, and planet relates to the environmental
consequences of the project. Ethical considerations can be considered to
be embedded within the culture of a company which is itself developed by
its leaders, discussed further in Section 4.5.
4.4 Experience
There has been a renewed interest in civil engineering education at Imperi-
al in practical experience alongside core understanding, with the inclusion
of laboratories and demonstrations in subjects such as structural mechan-
43
ics, fluid mechanics and geotechnics. This may reflect a gradual shifting
between the scholar academic and the social efficiency curriculum ideolo-
gies Schiro (2008) as part of what can be seen as a cyclical process, with
some of these activities being reintroduced having been lost from the cur-
riculum for a number of years. In saying this I do not mean to suggest
that the curriculum is not specific to the discipline of civil engineering, but
rather that there is an increased emphasis on application of knowledge to
promote understanding.
In analysing the interviews several of the participants commented that
much of what much of what could be described as the experience of being
an engineer was difficult to learn in any other setting than the workplace,
discussed further in Section 4.7. The value of guild knowledge was recog-
nised, with activities such as the Constructionarium providing experience
leading to this.
Activities with the potential to elucidate the engineering design process
to students, described as ‘design what you build’ activities were seen to
have particular value by one of the participants:
Perhaps the particular notion is that you design what you built,
and maybe we’re getting very specific here, but we’ve had peo-
ple come and interview for us, where they’ve been involved in
things, where they’ve made a miniature version of a bridge or a
miniature version of a structure, that’s fine. They seem to have
taken on, “This is the miniature structure we had to make,
and they showed us the structure, and we made it”. And I
can, the little, I haven’t had much to do with education, and
that’s not particularly deliberate, but I found sometimes there’s
an attitude of, “There’s an answer and we’re going to write it
down, and then we’ll have written down the answer”. And per-
haps they’re, if there is something about the construction in the
curriculum, I would be interested in people actually designing
something. So first of all, everybody sees there’s lots of different
answers to things, and secondly that they’ll see the results, if
they get the design wrong. (P02)
The same participant recognised that students may lack the knowledge
and skills to carry out design:
I’d rather they designed something, but I would, somebody
could say, “Yeah, but they’ve got to learn something first”.
(P02)
Going on to describe a project with an open brief that he had seen
presented a conference he commented:
44
He had set people a very open ended challenge of, “You’ve got
to make a timing device . . . I’m not going to tell you anything
about it, other than it’s got to rack up six chimes and then start
again”, or something, so it’s a timer. And that was fascinating,
so then I’m going to the other extreme of just open it right up,
there’s no right answer. (P02)
In the third year structural mechanics course at Imperial students get
to design and build an aluminium beam and test it to failure (make and
break). In the context of design and build this is a valuable exercise.
However, alongside an introductory challenge in the first year to design
and make the tallest possible tower out of a limited amount of newspaper
and sticky tape, it is one of very few opportunities to design what you
build. It is interesting to consider how the concept could be incorporated
into other courses on the undergraduate degree alongside the question of
how engineering undergraduates might experience engineering within an
industrial context prior to graduation. It also raises an issue in how we as
academics encourage students towards engineering thinking. While there
is a focus on problem solving this is frequently done after the academic has
formulated the problem, often providing no more and no less information
than is required to solve the problem. Hence we hide a large of amount of
the process from the students. It is interesting to consider how much the
problem definition part of the process should and could be opened up at
different stages of the degree.
4.5 Leadership
In considering leadership the participants were in general agreement that an
undergraduate degree should focus on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
discussed, with a range of views on the experiences that might be most
beneficial, rather than focus on the development of specific leadership skills.
However there was an acknowledgement that an awareness of leadership
skills would be beneficial, alongside an awareness of a number of stages
that an engineering career trajectory might take.
Two of the participants identified specific stages they felt their careers
had gone through, with one seeing these as representing a different focus
over successive ten year periods:
At different times, as you progress through your career, there’s
different sorts of leadership things that are needed. From the
early days, I think you need to be able to answer for your tech-
nical specialism, and get it right. You know, to bring the best,
expertise to the client and the design process, and you repre-
45
sent, you know, I’ve represented the mechanical engineer. So
when you’re at the table, your leadership has to be technically
excellent and right in those meetings, and then as you progress,
and you might have a broader leadership role, you have to not
only do that but also make sure that you’re drawing out from
the other engineering disciplines, the best of what they’ve got,
bringing them to the table at the right time. And then, as you
progress a bit further, you might then be in a greater leader-
ship role, where you’re more proactively with the people who
are shaping the project. So the client, the lead architect, the
funders, the investors, whoever they may be, and you’re repre-
senting the technical side but you’re trying to strategically steer
the project to a successful conclusion. So you’re trying to fore-
cast ahead, to make decisions. I suppose at the position I’m in
now, is where you’re leading teams of these sorts of people, and
you’re trying to mentor and coach them to have that, proactive
and forward looking approach to their projects. (P05)
. . . in the journey through an engineering career, I think you can
kind of map it out in ten year chunks really. And at different
stages these skills have different significance. So in the first ten
years I think very much you’re in the business of getting yourself
an education. And really I’ve never met a genius engineer at
22 who I would trust to do much actually. Certainly not much
in the real world, but I don’t think probably you’re able to see
what you’ve got until you’re in your late 20s or early 30s. And
really that period of your life is about developing a really pro-
found understanding of the way stuff is done. And that could be
a blend of technical, economic, social, political. So you’re build-
ing your knowledge and understanding and your knowledge of
how to do things. So in the first part of my career I’d say that I
was really testing my brain against technical challenges in some
depth. I mean I would spend, in those days, I mean I might
spend six months working on what looks like now a relatively
tiny part of a project, you know. And in great depth and know-
ing a lot about it. But it was training me to understand how
things work and go together. So the first part of my career I
would say was not so full of leading people or running teams, it
was much more about developing and understanding a knowl-
edge of the way the engineering world worked with a big focus,
in my case, on the practical and the technical. [. . . ] I learnt a
lot then about economic appraisal, risk assessment, risk anal-
46
ysis modelling, the role of analytical techniques. An emerging
sense that not all questions had singular answers and that not
all choices were objective in character and that actually there
was a lot more to it than that.
The second ten years in mapping out a professional career if
you’re any good, by the time you’re 30 people will start giving
you chances to exercise yourself on projects, and in my case
I was given a very significant role on a big project, And my
focus shifted very much from me and my personal performance
to how the hell do I get 30 people to perform, get along, be
happy? So I think the next ten years my focus was really on
getting good at getting along with people really. Of course there
are no clear boundaries between these things but if you were to
look at the dominant skill that was helping me in my 20s, it
wasn’t the same. In my 30s it was much more about an ability
to communicate, to think clearly at a more strategic level and
to get people to participant, perform and so on.
As I sit in the middle of my 40s, really my role is moved out
of the day to day business of running teams and getting per-
formance out of projects. It’s much more about the strategic
direction of the enterprise. Understanding trends in the market-
place, networking outside the tight confines of my organisation
into a broader network, positioning the organisation and our
journey through it. And so it involves broadening of thought
and attitudes and a different sort of interaction with other peo-
ple where it’s less about telling people what they need to do or
getting them to see what they need to do, and it’s more about
generating shared attitudes and shuffling, because the people I
deal with are not people I can give instruction to. At the very
best we can hope for a good lunch.
I imagine as I go on it will change again. (P04)
In both of these quotes as well as others the role of the leader as someone
who is able critically reflect and then implement a strategy is emphasised.
There was a sense of deliberate transformation of identities (Tennant, 2006,
ch 4). In contrast to the notion of communities of practice (Lave and
Wenger, 2003) there is a sense of networks expanding through the different
stages of leadership, starting from being comfortable within a culture, mov-
ing to influencing the culture of a company, and then extending the culture
of a company to an external network. Another participant talked about
gaining a societal status. Ove Arup’s Key Speech (1970) describes the
concept of ‘total architecture’ which seems to be indicative of the culture
47
that the leaders I interviewed were involved in creating and maintaining,
with the concept extending to honourable dealing with clients; honest,
consistent and empathetic dealings with staff; as well as a sense of ethical
integrity. As one of the participants commented:
I think engineers have the opportunity to be really influential
with our clients. Really, really influential, if we’re good enough
and we take the opportunity at the right moment. But if we just
take a brief and get on with it, the moment’s lost, you know.
Our ability to solve more problems than just what the client is
asking for. So when you make an intervention, an engineering
intervention, there are all sorts of things you can also solve with
that, and there are also sorts of things that you shouldn’t do
with that thing. So it’s, you know, as well as honourable deal-
ings and all that. I don’t mean to dismiss it, it’s fundamental.
You’ve got to have those kinds of ethics, but it is — what more
for society could you be doing? Sounds high faluting, and quite
grand, but actually why not, right? I mean, we’re making, you
know, we’re influencing nature in such a huge way. If we don’t
do it, you know — who will? (P05)
It came through in the interviews that technical excellence was a crucial
attribute in early career leadership, while in order to continue to progress
as a leader you need to consciously broaden your influences in order to
avoid remaining as a specialist, although it was acknowledged that many
specialists were happy in their positions.
. . . there are exciting paths for a structural engineer to become a
structural engineering specialist, and you know, it’s incredibly
rewarding as well, as in, you know, make no bones about it,
people who consider themselves to be the structural expert have,
are some of the happiest folk that we’ve got. You know, they
absolutely love it, but there is a point in their career where their
responsibility tops out and they perform the same role on lots of
projects, and will for many years, you know, ten, twenty years,
be at that level. (P05)
A critical skill in engineering leadership, and one that was looked out
for in engineering graduates was the assimilation of outside influences into
the engineering discipline. I see this as learning at a higher level than
that implied in Illeris’ learning model as it relates to the assimilation of
information and concepts outside of the domain or discipline that you are
based within. It could be considered as a gradual form of transformative
learning.
48
I do think that over the last sort of ten years, maybe, ten or
fifteen years, I’ve learnt as much if not more about my discipline
from non-engineering sources . . . engineering leaders should look
to non-engineering sources for inspiration, and reflection on, on
their discipline and their goals and how they go about their
work. (P05)
. . . you go to visit other people’s bridges, you go and look at
art shows, you read biographies. I mean, in short you read
biographies about Brunel, but you also read biographies about
anybody else you want to, Karl Marx. (P02)
If you are talking about graduates, they’ve already had, you
know sixteen to eighteen period at school when they could have
been head of orchestra, they could have gone round the world,
they could have, you know, written a book, they could have
done so many things these days and at university what they’ve
got up to in addition to the course. And then in a way, how
they’ve, how they perceive what they’ve learnt and often they’ve
got a bit of work experience, sometimes here which was shown
with some of them. So there’s a lot, in the end it’s how they
see the world, and how they’ve grabbed experience and used
that experience, learnt from that experience, I suppose have an
agenda. (P01)
There is a sense that graduates must been seen to be self-motivated
and self-aware, capable of independent thinking. The same participant
comments:
I have a sneaky suspicion we look for team leaders. That means,
you know, because in some respects they stand out, they im-
press, they have more to say, they probably have a history of
quite impressive stuff . . . so there is a danger than we tend to fo-
cus on getting in leaders and, therefore, don’t get enough team
players, you know, too many soloists and not enough orchestra.
But I think we’ve learnt, I’m not sure it’s been absorbed, but
I think it’s always a mistake to compromise. I think you have
to get the very best people you can find and then find ways of
them intelligently working how to get the best from each other.
So if by a team player we are looking for someone who is sub-
servient and not too creative and expects to be told what to do
or just follow the team, then I suspect we don’t really, that’s
not something we value so highly. (P01)
49
One phrase that was repeated in the interviews was the notion that
future leaders were those who were able to ‘front up’ in meetings with
clients and architects. They were able to bring something to the table, a
viewpoint based on their expertise and experience.
Several of the participants remembered being inspired during their early
careers, and it was clear that this had influenced their development towards
leadership positions, often related to being given responsibility and seeing
their leaders or mentors prepared to take risks in order to achieve the
optimal or desired outcome, a sense of excellence as opposed to competence,
good engineering as opposed to ordinary engineering.
One participant provided the analogy of building a sports team, with
an emphasis on diversity :
I mean the analogy might be putting a football team together,
or a rugby team or cricket team, or you know, a team sport
activity. How you select your team and your selection of your
captain. Now, typically an organisation cannot work with, or
a football team can’t work with a team full of goalkeepers or
a team full of centre forwards. You have to have a range of
skills in order for the whole team to function, and the same, it’s
exactly the same within an engineering organisation. (P03)
This was something that was echoed in several of the other interviews,
often relating to the ideation phase of a project. Although the participants
were clear that they were not looking for specific personality types, they
were in general looking for the diversity provided by individual graduate’s
interests and experiences beyond their degree courses.
Across the interviews four different types of leadership were identified,
which could be seen as changing in their significance at different stages of
an individual’s career trajectory. These were technical leadership, taking
responsibility for an area of technical expertise; design leadership, taking
responsibility for part or the whole of the engineering design process, dis-
cussed further in Section 4.6; business leadership, taking responsibility for
the financial as well as engineering success of a project or collection of
projects; and social leadership, taking responsibility for the development
of the culture of an organisation.
It emerged from the interviews that there was a clear distinction be-
tween the notion of leadership and the person nominated as being in charge.
There was a sense that engineers were best led by other engineers who
would have been through similar experiences and overcome similar knowl-
edge barriers.
This is a domain where your ability to understand the way the
physical world works, to use the intellectual tools and techniques
50
of engineers is very highly valued and people simply will not
recognise you, even if you’re in charge. And I know of many large
organisations where the staff will talk about the accountant who
is in charge, very dismissively, and hark back to the era when
the person in charge was an engineer of note, who had achieved
in things that they thought were valuable. So I think that if
you were to take the general concept of leadership as applied to
groups of people or organisations, and then to contextualise it
within engineering terms, probably the most significant flavour
that comes out of that is that engineers tend to have a strong
sense of importance of understanding the physical work, making
stuff, doing stuff that looks like engineering. And they expect of
their leaders, as a base requirement, a high level of competence
in that. (P04)
4.6 Engineering design process
It is evident that design and in particular engineering design must be con-
sidered as a process conducted by teams or groups of engineers, all with
particular knowledge, skills, attitudes and experience sets. However this
process often seems to be forgotten in the academic setting, with individu-
al courses developed and delivered largely by individuals or small groups,
generally focused on a knowledge curriculum. While it is clear from the
interviews that the concepts of deep and broad knowledge or thinking are
of use, the knowledge domain alone is not capable of describing the de-
velopment of engineering thinking. It seems sensible therefore to consider
using an engineering design process framework to assess what aspects of
the framework are addressed as part of an undergraduate civil engineering
degree course.
One participant had a well developed idea of the engineering design
process in this respect:
I understand engineering to involve the exercise of certain core
processes. The process of ideation, testing, judgement, commu-
nication put together in some sort of programmatic form in a
project. And what we’re doing as educators is we’re helping
people to develop core skills that allow them to occupy that.
My critique of the current education system is that, in that
model what we do is we over focus on testing. So most of what
we teach people is how to test certain things, how to establish
whether the stress that exists is permissible stresses. What we
don’t focus nearly so much on or to nearly such good effect is
51
the process of ideation and judgement, nor do we really work
on the question of attitudinal behaviours at all. (P04)
Another participant drew attention to the iterative nature of the engi-
neering design process:
I mean the number of loops we go through, I think people don’t
realise just how many loops you go through, where they say,
“Well I had this idea”. Then you sketch it, you send it over. We
now simply take a picture on our phones, and send it to some-
body, they pick it up, they sketch something on their, whatever,
piece of paper, send it back and the endless process is very in-
teresting. (P02)
Based on my analysis of the interviews as well as other sources and
experience, some of which are presented in this dissertation, I have drawn
up an interpretation of the engineering design process, shown in Figure 3
which I present as part of the Group Design Projects.
Define Ideate
Quantitative
judgement
Make
Qualitative
judgement
Convince
Figure 3: Interpretation of the Engineering Design Process
This interpretation breaks the engineering design process into distinct
stages of: define associated with problem definition; ideate associated with
the process of generating ideas; an iterative development stage associated
with quantitative judgement and qualitative judgement ; convince associat-
ed with convincing yourself, your team, your company and your client that
your solution is the optimal one; make which is associated with the final
stage of construction. Double headed connections are shown between each
of the stages as design cannot be viewed as a linear process, with transitions
52
occurring forwards and backwards between each of the stages. Addition-
al connections are shown between quantitative and qualitative judgement,
and ideate and convince as these processes are interpreted as occurring
in parallel, while the development stage is shown as iterative in nature.
Dash-dot connections indicate opportunities within the process for critical
reflection. Within this interpretation there is a sense of entering liminal
space in the tensions between quantitative and qualitative judgement, and
ideation and convincing. With regards to the quantitative — qualitative
tension the development of these processes in parallel is viewed as a critical
requirement of informed creativity. One of the participants described this
as modulation between different modes of thought:
So if you imagine that you can have many, many steps in a
process of thought, depth, or you can have lots and lots of things
you’re thinking about, breadth. Those things and the ability to
move between those modes of thought turn out to be, in my
view, essential to success in professional life. It’s not only the
ability to do those things, it’s the ability to know when to do
those things. And to be able to modulate your behaviour and
your thought process from one mode to another, depending on
the circumstances you find yourself in. (P04)
In speaking to students on the Group Design Projects they have found
it useful to be able to situate themselves within a process and acknowledge
that there are parts of the process that they are likely to be well versed
in (quantitative judgement), and parts that will challenge them (define,
ideate, qualitative judgement, convince). While the Group Design Projects
do not continue on to the make process I feel it is important that this is
included as it is an essential part of the overall engineering design process.
Following completion of the Group Design Projects this year, I plan to
discuss my interpretation either individually or in a focus group with the
interview participants, as well as asking the students to reflect on their
experiences of the Group Design Projects in the context of seeing them
as an engineering design process. Depending on the findings I believe it
could have application as a framework within which to position the current
civil engineering undergraduate curriculum, incorporating the additional
perspectives of skills, attitudes and experiences.
4.7 Education partnerships
In interpreting the interviews there was a consistent sense that current
university education did not provide graduates who were fully prepared to
enter the engineering profession, although it was acknowledged that signifi-
53
cant changes had taken place. For larger engineering consultancies in-house
training served to develop additional graduate attributes, while for small-
er engineering consultancies there were substantial risks associated with
appointing graduates outside of an elite group of ten universities. There
were a number of indicators that future leaders could be accommodated
as outliers within large engineering consultancies, but had the potential
at graduate level to cause disruption within smaller consultancies. This
finding runs contra to what I believe many undergraduate students believe
and are advised.
There was discomfort with the present separation between engineering
education and engineering practice. As one participant commented:
. . . for very understandable historic reasons we are part of the
same profession separated by a gulf of misunderstanding and
misaligned career objectives. (P04)
Participants commented on both the useful roles that undergraduate
students could play within an organisation as well as acknowledging that
few graduates from their first degree could immediately take on the re-
sponsibilities of a professional engineer.
So I used to accept things (laughter) and now I’m starting to
think, you know, “What are universities all about” because
there is a bit of me . . . that thinks you don’t need to send a
young person of eighteen to university for four years. It’s just,
it’s a waste of money, it’s a waste of their time and it’s a waste
of now their money [. . . ] So you then say, “Well some of you
are going to stay on for another four years or so and do a PhD
because that’s what we do and that’s how we get our money
and that’s going to make you a better person, apparently”. I
thought it was about getting a thesis but now I realise that’s
about making you a better person, that’s eight years gone. I
can’t imagine we couldn’t do a better job spending those eight
years differently, but I haven’t quite mapped out what differ-
ently looks like [. . . ] But isolating them [students] into that
environment when there is a big world that they could be ex-
periencing doesn’t seem logical and, so if, businesses put their
minds to it and in collaboration with other businesses which are
called universities, which have specialised in let’s say facilities
for, you know, allowing them to explore concrete, or facilities for
allowing them to do stuff that business, or one business couldn’t
have. Maybe facilities for experts to teach threads of knowledge
that relate to the work that they’re doing in the business. [. . . ]
54
You kind of wonder whether there isn’t a completely different,
kind of, model which is, which is what comes about between a
very proper partnership between an academic, a training busi-
ness and a delivering business. (P01)
Were you to make the course substantially, not substantially
longer, but longer, five years. You may have a year out, and
not earning any money, but getting some experience, and then
going back for two years or whatever. And then at the end of
your examinations you qualify as a chartered engineer . . . so you
come out, you know, as a young chartered engineer. It may not
be perfect but then an architect coming out . . . isn’t perfect or
a, a guy coming out with a medical degree. You know, he’s still
very much on probation. [. . . ] Suddenly it becomes a much
more dominant profession, in the sense that people see, “Gosh,
he’s done his six years or five years” . . . and the Europeans do
it that way. (P03)
. . . there’s a little, I say a little gang, there’s a gang of some
very serious people in industry with no academics around the
table, sitting and having this conversation and saying, you know,
“Let’s give them a brief. Let’s give the educationalists [educa-
tors] a brief”. At the moment we are not as an industry giving
them a clear brief, we’re basically just whinging and they’re
just defending and so we’re getting nowhere with this. On this
particular theme of design, let us turn round and say, “This is
what we want. We will help you do this in the following ways.
If you don’t do it we’ll simply do it ourselves and so you’ll miss
a trick”. (P04)
The concept of education partnerships between academia and industry
emerged as a potential solution to the current dilemma. These would need
to be somewhat more than the industrial advisory boards which already
exist at many universities, which in my experience meet once a year or
every few months and achieve little outside of those meetings. Instead
representatives of academia and industry are required to become embedded
within each other’s organisational domains, to allow students to effectively
transition between the two. This dissertation does not seek to provide the
details of such a process, but rather to highlight the formation of education
partnerships as a future scenario, that engineering consultancies, research
intensive universities and the engineering institutions should give, and in
some pockets of excellence have given, active consideration to.
55
4.8 MBTI data analysis
Analysis of MBTI data collected from students prior to commencing the
Group Design Projects is presented in order to assess if any trends can
be identified and whether any useful comparisons can be made between
the student cohort at Imperial compared to data collected at other insti-
tutions (Shen et al., 2007). As discussed in Section 3.3 the data presented
is based on just four questions. MBTI questionnaires have been found to
have inconsistent repeatability rates, with the indicator varying over time
as individuals acquire further knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences.
Table 1 shows the MBTI distribution for students taking part in the
Group Design Projects each year from 2011 to 2014. Table 2 shows the
means and medians for each of the MBTI categories on a normalised scale.
Table 3 shows the percentage split between each of the MBTI categories,
as well as the number of standard deviations (SD) away from the mean.
Table 1: Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) distributions for students takingpart in the Group Design Projects
MBTI 2011 (%) 2012 (%) 2013 (%) 2014 (%) Mean (%)(n=90) (n=108) (n=69) (n=101) (n=368)
ESTJ 37.8 32.4 42.0 33.7 36.4ESTP 1.1 0.9 4.4 5.9 3.1ESFJ 5.6 9.3 4.4 5.9 6.3ESFP 4.4 3.7 2.9 2.0 3.3ENTJ 11.1 6.4 8.7 5.0 7.8ENTP 3.3 3.7 4.4 1.0 3.1ENFJ 3.3 6.4 2.9 5.0 4.4ENFP 3.3 1.9 2.9 5.0 3.3ISTJ 16.7 16.7 14.5 17.8 16.4ISTP 0 1.9 0 2.0 1.0ISFJ 1.1 5.6 7.3 1.0 3.7ISFP 0 0 0 3.0 0.7INTJ 5.6 2.8 1.5 5.0 3.7INTP 2.2 2.8 0 4.0 2.2INFJ 1.1 4.6 2.9 1.0 2.4INFP 3.3 0.9 1.5 3.0 2.2
Looking at Table 1 it can be seen that the ESTJ and ISTJ personality
types account for above 50% of the student cohort for the past four years.
This compares to an average in the general UK population of 10.4% (ESTJ)
and 13.7% (ISTJ) and for a sample of design students (Shen et al., 2007) of
4.2% (ESTJ) and 1.4% (ISTJ). It is interesting to note that there has been
a decline over the four years in the number of ENTJ types with Shen et
al. (2007) placing a particular importance on intuition rather than sensing
56
Table 2: MBTI category values on a normalised (–1 → +1) scale
MBTI E → I S → N T → F J → PMean Median Mean Median Mean Median Mean Median
2011 –0.26 –0.33 –0.15 –0.11 –0.28 –0.33 –0.41 –0.562012 –0.15 –0.11 –0.23 –0.33 –0.22 –0.33 –0.36 –0.332013 –0.30 –0.33 –0.25 –0.33 –0.27 –0.33 –0.38 –0.562014 –0.15 –0.11 –0.24 –0.33 –0.28 –0.33 –0.34 –0.56
Mean –0.22 –0.22 –0.22 –0.28 –0.26 –0.33 –0.37 –0.50
Table 3: MBTI category percentage splits (dominant category shown)
MBTI E (%) #SD S (%) #SD T (%) #SD J (%) #SD
2011 70.0 +0.55 66.7 –1.19 77.8 +0.92 82.2 +0.222012 64.8 –0.66 70.4 –0.15 67.6 –1.41 84.3 +0.652013 72.5 +1.12 75.4 +1.24 75.7 +0.37 84.1 +0.612014 63.4 –1.00 71.3 +0.10 74.3 +0.12 74.3 –1.47
Mean 67.7 70.9 73.8 81.2SD 4.3 3.6 4.4 4.7
as an indicator of creativity. It may be that the limited nature of the
questionnaire in comparison to the 93 questions indicated by Shen et al.
prevents the respective sets of data from being directly comparable.
Table 2 provides an indication of how far from a neutral position (zero)
in each of the dimensions the responses given by each student cohort on
a Likert scale are positioned. I have not seen this type of information
reported for MBTI although it is similar to the presentation of data adopted
by Kolb (1981) and Biglan (1973a, 1973b). It is observed that for the first
two dimensions in particular (extrovert–introvert and sensing–intuition)
the data indicates that student preference is closer to the neutral than the
extreme, while only for the final dimension (judging–perceiving) do the
responses move towards a more definite indication of preference.
Table 3 gives an indication of the extent to which each of the four
student cohorts varies in comparison to the average cohort. It is difficult
to draw conclusions from this data, although tempting to retrospectively
use the data to explain perceived characteristics of a group that could
be related to a multitude of factors. It is of interest that the cohort for
this year has a significantly lower percentage of extroverts and judging
personality types. Initial discussion with students and project supervisors
suggests that the cohort has been keen to adopt the proposed engineering
design process, although this may be because it has been presented to
them, having not been presented to previous cohorts, rather than being an
indication of group behaviour based on collective personality types.
57
In discussing MBTI characteristics it is difficult to suggest that an
individual’s response to any particular stimuli could be predicted based
on them being assigned to one of sixteen different types, in a similar way
that it seems improbable that our actions are guided by which sign of the
zodiac we happen to have been ascribed. The MBTI data will continue to
be used as part of the broader skills and experience questionnaire used to
ensure diversity amongst groups. This year the data has for the first time
been shared with the members of each group and discussions suggest that
the students have found it useful in appreciating the different perspectives
that individual group members could be operating from. I suspect its usage
will not develop beyond this, but its role in highlighting diversity may be
sufficient.
58
5 Conclusions
Civil engineering undergraduate curricula have traditionally focused on
engineering knowledge, with students being made aware of particular cur-
riculum content through module or course descriptors. More recently the
concepts of broad and deep knowledge or thinking have found acceptance
amongst engineering academics, as well as the notions of creativity and
leadership. Referring to the research aim of the work, the interpretation
of the interviews carried out as part of this dissertation illustrates that
confining curricula to the knowledge dimension is an unsatisfactory propo-
sition to prepare to graduates for roles in an ever changing and fragmenting
profession, although the concepts of broad and deep thinking are seen as
relevant. Creativity and leadership may be better viewed as desirable out-
comes dependent on a broad range of attributes, which may be displayed
through individual and group activities.
Characteristics or attributes associated with the knowledge, skills, atti-
tudes and experience dimensions must all be considered. Specific attributes
were identified in the skills dimension; communicate, collaborate, challenge
and convince; and the attitudes dimension; curiosity, courage, respect and
reflection.
Given the acceptance that the distinctive attributes of an engineer
should contribute to the ability to design, an interpretation of the engi-
neering design process is presented, intended to act as a framework to al-
low academics and students (teachers and learners) to position themselves
within. Each course within an existing curriculum may then be associ-
ated with a specific process, allowing an overview to be gained of which
processes may be under or over represented within teaching and learning
practice.
The historical categorisation of specific courses as ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ has in
my view damaged the perception of courses that may well encourage the
development of attributes beyond the knowledge dimension. I think we
need to stop discussing design courses in particular as helping to develop
‘soft skills’, when it is evident that the engineering profession views these
as ‘core skills’. I have also begun to question the need for the broad range
of core knowledge that is included in many civil engineering undergraduate
curricula. It is evident that industry requires graduates to have an aware-
ness and be able to communicate and collaborate with those from other
engineering and associated disciplines, but it is also evident that industry is
not, at least at graduate level, looking for people who can do it all, without
being able to do any of it from a sufficiently informed perspective.
Current curricula are crowded, leaving little time for students to crit-
ically reflect on educational experiences. I believe that allowing students
59
to specialise in order to provide them with time in which to generalise is
a workable solution. Whether in civil engineering this distinction is drawn
along the lines of building engineers and infrastructure engineers is a matter
for discussion, but it is my view that this is a discussion worth having. In a
similar manner education partnerships between universities and engineer-
ing consultancies seem an attractive proposition worth further discussion
and action.
The public perception of engineering was discussed in several of the in-
terviews. I see engineering as having a significant knowledge barrier. Unless
you have passed this knowledge barrier it is difficult to have an opinion on
the discipline, in a way that is not the case for other professions. I can for
example have opinions on medicine, or law, or finance, or architecture, al-
though these might not be recognised as valid opinions by those practising
within these disciplines. There are disciplines within engineering that I am
not comfortable with offering opinions on. I think access to this otherwise
inaccessible knowledge, as well as public conceptions of what do engineers
do, can only be changed through education, presenting engineering and
design as a process, extending through school and university. I am always
struck on the Royal Institution Engineering Masterclasses that I deliver
by how engaged school students are with the concept of the engineer as
a designer, engaged in a process focused on the physical realisation of an
idea.
This dissertation should be considered as developing conceptions of en-
gineering excellence and the role of universities in allowing students to de-
velop the knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences required to produce
that engineering excellence.
60
6 Reflections
As I commented to one of the participants, this dissertation is ‘a bit dif-
ferent to my normal business, there’s some pushing of my comfort zone’.
I have found engaging with educational research to be challenging but ex-
tremely rewarding in allowing me to critically reflect on the ways, the hows
and the whys of undergraduate civil engineering education practice.
If I was to do it all again, would I do it differently? Reflecting on the ex-
perience I would definitely change some aspects relating to my own ways of
carrying out the research. When reading through the interview transcripts
there are a multitude of occasions when I think, why did I not follow that
up, or why did I keep following up on that? In terms of the participant
group selection, I think that choosing to interview engineering leaders on
their conceptions of engineering education exposed me to a collection of
views and opinions that rarely seem to be addressed within engineering
education.
The research process has allowed me to critically reflect on my own
educational practice with continuing changes being made to the Group
Design Projects, including making students aware of the engineering design
process, learning levels, and broad and deep thinking as parallel processes.
I have also made changes on my other courses, introducing demonstrations
and pop-up labs, while the notion of ‘design what you build’ has stayed with
me as a concept for future development. The need to provide opportunities
for students to develop in the knowledge, skills, attitudes and experience
dimensions has been made clearer to me.
In thinking about developing the work further I am of the view that
this should be done in partnership with all or several of the participants, at
least if it is to progress beyond the focus group stage. While I appreciate
the need for an education ethics review process, I am now of the view that
if changes in engineering education, motivated in part by this work, are to
be bought about, these require the active involvement of a group of people
engaged in opening up private discussions to public debate.
As a final thought I was struck in reading and rereading the quotes and
transcripts at how many times the phrase, ‘you know’ is used. For me this
perhaps best illustrates the aim of the research, in that I suspect on many
occasions the question, ‘you know?’ should be met with the response, ‘well
actually, I didn’t’.
61
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Appendices
• Appendix A:
Interview question schedule
• Appendix B:
Participant information sheet
• Appendix C:
Participant consent form
• Appendix D:
Education Ethics Review Process (EERP)
Approved ethics application
• Appendix E:
Samples of an annotated transcript and loose leaf analysis notes
67
Conceptions of Engineering Leadership and the Role of Universities in Developing Engineering Leaders
Main Question Follow-up Questions
1. What civil engineering projects are you working on at the moment?
1.1 Have any of the projects presented particular challenges?1.2 What skills have helped you on the projects?
2. What career path did you take to get your current job?
2.1 What skills do you think have helped you in your career?2.2 What skills in particular do you think help you in your current job?
3. What do you understand by the phrase 'engineering leadership'?
3.1 How important do you think broad thinking, deep thinking and creativity are in engineering leadership?3.2 Do you think broad thinking, deep thinking and creativity are related to each other?
4. How would you describe your role as an engineering leader?
4.1 How do you describe yourself, what does it say on your business card (emphasis on engineer or leader)?4.2 How do you make decisions and what skills do you rely on when making them?4.3 How much do you rely on the team around you?4.4 What do you think is this difference between an engineering leader and an architect?
5. When appointing a graduate civil engineer what characteristics do you look for?
5.1 Are you looking to recruit team players or team leaders?5.2 Is there a difference between team players and team leaders?5.3 How important are broad thinking, deep thinking, and creativity?5.4 What other characteristics are important?
6. What do you think the role of universities is in developing civil engineers?
6.1 How much should universities focus on an academic curriculum, focusing or core knowledge and understanding?6.2 How much should universities focus on a vocation curriculum, focusing on practical experience, including group working?6.3 Is there an appropriate mix and order between academic and vocational approaches?6.4 How do you think universities can promote broad thinking, deep thinking and creativity?
7. What do you think the role of universities is in developing engineering leaders?
7.1 Do you think universities should be responsible for developing engineering leadership?7.2 How do you think universities can develop engineering leaders?7.3 Can leadership skills be taught separately to engineering skills?7.4 Do you need to be an engineer to be an engineering leader?7.5 What skills were you taught at university that have helped you become an engineering leader?7.6 What skills do you wish you had been taught at university to help you become an engineering leader?
8. Is there anything you would like to add? 8.1 Are there any questions you would like to revisit?8.2 Is there anything you think has been missed?
25 February 2014
Participant Information Sheet
Conceptions of Engineering Leadership and the Role of Universities in Developing Engineering Leaders
Lead Researcher: Dr Andrew Phillips
Introduction:
I am looking for civil engineering leaders to be interviewed and possibly to meet as a focus group as part of a study to
investigate conceptions of the skills required for engineering leadership and the role of universities in developing these
skills. Before you decide whether to contribute to this research it is important to understanding why the research is being
conducted and what it will involve.
What is the purpose of the study?
The purpose of the study is to investigate conceptions of engineering leadership, in particular conceptions of the skills
required to be an engineering leader. Civil Engineering courses can be viewed as a mix between the acquisition of hard
skills such as technical knowledge and understanding, and soft skills such as creative design and group work. The study
seeks to investigate what an appropriate mix of these skills is considered to be, and more generally what the role of
universities should be in developing engineering leaders.
Why have I been invited?
You have been invited as you have been identified as an engineering leader with existing or previous involvement with
the MEng degree course in Civil Engineering at Imperial College London.
Do I have to take part?
It is up to you to decide whether or not to take part. If you decide to take part you will be asked to sign a participant
consent form. If you decide to take part you are free to withdraw at any time prior to the analysis and publication of data
from the study without giving a reason.
What will happen next if I choose to take part?
I will contact you to arrange a date, time and location for the interview. You will also be asked to sign a participant
consent form prior to the interview. Interviews are expected to last around an hour and will be audio recorded. Following
transcription of the interview I may contact you again for clarification on any issues. It is possible that I may request a
further interview or ask you to take part in a focus group to explore particular areas of interest. If you are asked to take
part in a focus group this may be video as well as audio recorded in order to aid transcription.
Participants will not be offered any reimbursement for their participation.
Will my taking part in this study be kept confidential?
All information obtained during the interview will be kept strictly confidential. Any information about you will be kept
anonymous. All procedures for handling, processing, storage and destruction of the data are compliant with the Data
Protection Act, 1988 and with Imperial College London guidelines.
Should you wish your contribution to the research to be acknowledged this should be clearly indicated on the consent
form. If you indicate that you wish your contribution to be acknowledged you will be acknowledged in reports and
publications resulting from the work. All other information will be kept anonymous.
Who is funding the research study?
The study is being funded by Imperial College London to the extent that they are waiving the fees of the Lead Researcher
(Dr Andrew Phillips)
P.T.O.
Page 1 of 2
What will happen to the results of the research study?
The study forms course work for my Masters in University Learning and Teaching (MEd ULT) at Imperial College London.
The resulting dissertation will be presented to course assessors for assessment. Results may be published in relevant
journals and shared with conference delegates if appropriate. Unless requested you will not be identified in any
publication.
Who has reviewed the research study?
The project, the plan and arrangements for this research study were approved through the Imperial College London
Educational Ethics Review Process.
Contact for further information
If you have any further queries, please contact the Lead Researcher (Dr Andrew Phillips) using the contact details below:
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +44(0)207 594 6081
Thank you for taking time to read this Contributor Information Sheet.
If you would like to take part in the research study, please express your interest by replying to the email that will be sent
to you shortly.
Page 2 of 2
Participant Consent Form
Conceptions of Engineering Leadership and the Role of Universities in Developing Engineering LeadersLead Researcher: Dr Andrew Phillips
Please initial the relevant boxes:
1. I confirm that I have read and understood the Participant Information Sheet dated 25 February 2014 explaining the research study, and I have had the opportunity to ask questions about the project.
2. I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any time prior to the analysis and publication of data from the study without giving reason and without there being any negative consequences. In addition, should I not wish to answer any particular question or questions, I am free to decline.
3. Please select one of the options:
a) I do not wish my contribution to the research study to be acknowledged. I understand that my individual responses will be kept strictly confidential and I give permission for members of the research team to have access to my anonymised responses. I understand that my name will not be linked with research materials. I will not be acknowledged in the reports, publications and presentations that result from the research study.
Or:
b) I do wish my contribution to the research study to be acknowledged. I understand that my individual responses will be kept strictly confidential and I give permission for members of the research team to have access to my anonymised responses. I understand that my name will be linked with research materials. I will be acknowledged in the reports, publications and presentations that result from the research study.
4. I agree to the audio recording of any interviews and video and audio recording of focus groups conducted as part of the research study. I also agree to provide originals or copies of any notes or illustrative sketches made by me as part of the research study.
5. I understand that anonymised data collected from me may be used in future research.
6. I agree to take part in the above research study.
_______________________ _________________ _______________________Name of Participant Date Signature
_______________________ _________________ _______________________Lead Researcher Date Signature
Copies: Once this has been signed by all parties the participant should receive a copy of the signed and dated participant consent form, the Participant Information Sheet and and other written information provided to participants. A copy of the signed and dated consent form will be kept in a secure location with other documents relating to the research study.
1.1 First name: Andrew
1.2 Family name: Phillips
1.3 Address: Imperial College London Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Skempton Building South Kensington Campus London SW7 2AZ
1.4 Telephone: 02075946081
1.5 Email: [email protected]
1.6 Title of study: Conceptions of engineering leadership and the role of universities in developing engineering leaders
1.7 Proposed start date: 01/02/2014
1.8 Proposed end date: 31/05/2014
1.9 Are there co-investigators? No
1.10 First name (Primary co-investigator):
1.11 Family name (Primary co-investigator):
1.12 Email (Primary co-investigator):
1.13 List name and email of any other co-investigators:
1.14 Is this a student project? Yes
1.15 First name (Supervisor): David
1.16 Family name (Supervisor): Riley
1.17 Email (Supervisor): [email protected]
1.18 Course of study: MEd ULT
1.19 Project deadline: 02/06/2014
1.20 Has your supervisor read and agreed this application?
Yes
Does your study involve any of the following?
2.5 Has any part of this proposal received prior ethicalapproval?
No
2.6 Has any part of this proposal been rejected by an ethics committee?
No
Further Details:
2.7 What is your main research question? The primary aim of the research is to assess conceptions of the role of universities in developing engineering leaders. The
secondary aims of the research are to investigate conceptions of what skills are required to be an engineering leader and in the context of civil engineering what role universities have in developing these skills. A priori it is thought that engineering leaders are capable of broad thinking, deep thinking and creativity. The work sets out to assess if this is the case, or if other skill-sets are considered to be important. The work will assess what role MEng civil engineering curricula are considered to play in developing these skill-sets. There is a sense that engineering programmes in the UK, North America and Europe are successful in producing either broad or deep thinkers but not both. Creativity is a characteristic that universities are encouraged to develop in students; however this is often approached in isolation from the rest of the curriculum. The project will investigate the concept of conflicting curricula approaches, as well as exploring what characteristics industry leaders valueand expect in engineering graduates and whether existing degree curricula are likely to be successful in producing graduates with these skill-sets.
2.8 Please list any sub question(s): The project will assess what skill-sets engineer leaders rely on in making decisions. A priori it is thought that skills will either be considered as related to core knowledge and understanding, or related to practical experience including those related to group working; while creativity is likely to be an additional consideration. There are parallels with alternative curricula types. The project will seek to investigate what balance industry leaders feel there should be between academic and vocational curricula.
2.9 What is the rationale for the study? The rationale is to provide information for those developing civil engineering MEng curricula focused on meeting industry expectations and requirements. It has been decided to interview industry leaders who have an association with Imperial College London as they will be involved in the recruitment of graduates from a range of degree and non-degree backgrounds. Hence they are likely to have reflected on the characteristics they believe are required. They will also have had the opportunity to reflect on what they believe is required of a degree programme to bring about these qualities. There are only arelatively small number of individuals who fulfil these criteria. Hence the work will be carried out against a background of previous discussions in which the themes of creativity and broad and deep thinking have been identified a priori. The work will be carried out using a modified grounded theory approach so that it can be developed to accommodate additional concepts.
2.10 Methods - check all you intend to use: Interviews; Focus groups
Please provide brief details of any other methods:
2.11 Location - check all/any places that may apply: Imperial College premises; Other private place (please specify & describe below); Other public place (please specify & describe below)
Please provide brief details of other private or public places:
Interviews with industry leaders are likely to be undertaken either at their offices or in a public place such as a coffee shop. Itis possible that interviews may be conducted on College premises. If time permits it is planned to hold a focus group of those who have already been interviewed on College premises, although it is possible this will be held after submission of the dissertation.
2.12 Participants - sort of people you are looking to recruit into the project (incl. inclusion/exclusion criteria)?
Industry leaders. Three to five civil engineering leaders will be approached. As mentioned the number of potential participantsis relatively low (10 or fewer) and is limited to those already known by the researcher. In addition to provide a richer background it is proposed to interview a retired academic and a risk enterprise manager with a civil engineering background, both of whom are also already known to the researcher.
2.13 Recruitment - how will participants be approached & recruited?
Industry leaders will be approached and recruited through existing contacts. Several of these contacts are already involved in professional conversations related to civil engineering education within and without the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. Due to their professional standing it is likely that participants will wishto be acknowledged as contributing to the study. The participant consent form and information sheet have been altered to reflect this.
2.14 Consent - will participants get an information Yes
sheet with adequate reading time?
Will participants (except those just completing questionnaires) sign a consent form?
Yes
Will participants be informed that returning a questionnaire implies consent to participate?
N/A
Will participants have the right to withdraw and remove ‘their data’?
Yes
2.15 Confidentiality - will questionnaires be anonymous or anonymised as soon as possible?
N/A
Will any transcripts be anonymised/pseudomised as soon as possible?
Yes
Will identifiers &/or pseudonyms be stored securely & separately from research data?
Yes
Will data & records be held securely & in accordance with Imperial guidelines?
Yes
2.16 Incentives - will you offer incentives to participants (financial or otherwise)?
No incentives will be offered to take part in the study. Refreshment will be provided during interviews where these take place at Imperial College London or a public location. Where interviews are held at the interviewee's place of work it is assumed they will provide refreshment if required.
2.17 Value - provide a brief description of benefits this work may provide to you, participants & others:
The work should provide valuable insight into industry expectations for an MEng degree. This could have impact in changing the curriculum of the MEng civil engineering degree at Imperial College London. Publishing of the findings should also be of interested to course organisers and curriculum designers. It may also have impact through reflection in industry on student experience at the start of an engineering career.
2.18 Dissemination - provide a brief description of how this study will be communicated both within Imperial & beyond:
Journal article / report. Follow-up meetings and presentations with industry and interested parties such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Council. These dissemination routes have been chosen as universities, companies and the engineering institutions are considered to be the key players and stakeholders for the study.
2.19 Summary & justification of method(s): The use of semi-structured interviews will allow key areas to be investigated while allowing for participants to spend time on areas they may feel are particularly important. Interviews will be audio recorded and as engineers frequently used diagrams to convey concepts participants will be asked to provide originals or copies of any sketches or diagrams made during the interviews. The participant consent form and information sheet have been altered to reflect this. Collection of an audio recording of the interview, as well as collection of sketches and diagrams, will allow for transcription and analysis following the interview. Analysis will initially focus on the a priori themes using a modified grounded theory approach (albeit unlikely to achieve saturation) to extend to other concepts if necessary. Time permitting each interview and analysis will be conducted inseries to allow for adjustments to the interview structure throughout the study. The use of a focus group following the interviews (if time permits) will allow participants to add to their individual responses based on material processed by the investigator. A focus group will allow areas that may only have been touched on during the interviews to be explored in more depth if they find resonance with the participants.
3.1 Confirm that you have considered each of the following ethical issues:
Power issues
3.2 Ethical Summary - explain how all relevant ethicalissues have been appropriately considered:
There are potential power issues with interviewing industry leaders in that they may feel they are able to exert influence over the Civil Engineering MEng degree curriculum at Imperial College London. It will be made clear to them that it is general views that are being sought, although they may wish to illustrate them with specific reference to the Imperial degree. While reference to the Imperial degree may be appropriate based on their experience they will be encouraged to think more generally. There is an issue related to recognition of time spent by interviewees contributing to the project. It may be the case that they would like to be named as contributing to the project. In addition knowledge of the project contributors may provide validation and legitimacy when presenting findings to interested parties such as the Institution of Civil Engineers. The consent form will ask each interviewee if they would like their contribution to the study to be acknowledged. All comments will be anonymised regardless of whether a contributor is acknowledged. This process is explained on the Participant Information Sheet and on the Participant Consent Form.
The research does not involve students or assessment. In addition given the experience, professional roles and personalities of potential participants the research does not involve participants who may be coerced into giving particular responses. It is expected given their professional experience that participants will be able to provide appropriate responses (or non-responses) to questions considered personally or commercially sensitive.
With reference to the BERA Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research (2011) the applicant recognises that I have an obligation to Imperial College London and the educational research community not to harm their reputation and to conduct research with integrity, authenticity and professionalism; just as the opportunity to conduct this research relies on my predecessors having carried out research with the same qualities.
4.1 Supporting Documentation - check any/all that you attach:
Participant information sheet; Participant consent form; Interview / Focus group questions