Republic Central Colleges

High School Department

Civil Engineers in the Teaching Realm:

Their Experiences and Struggles

A Research Output
Presented to Mr. Jhonas Lumanlan
Republic Central Colleges

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Subject
Practical Research 1

Atchico, Juztine
Nava, Keyrone
Bangayan, Keith
Lopez, Gabriel
Yuson, Aries
Dizon, Jim Clyde
Lobo, Mikel
Zablan, Lorena
Candelaria, John Dale

March 2019
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Civil engineering is one of the most important professions. Civil engineering is

about to maintaining and adapting the infrastructure that we depend on every day such

as roads, railways and bridges buildings, civil engineers have to keep this infrastructure

running effectively and adapt it to meet challenges, such as population growth, climate

change and natural disasters (Nick, B. 2013).

According to the article of The Guardian (2013), civil engineers are highly trained

professionals who plan construction work. There are two types of civil engineering roles

within the various specialisms, consultants who focus on design work and generally

spend more time in the office or working with clients, and contractors who are more

involved with keeping an eye on the physical construction and are usually based on-

site.

As stated to the article of Civil Engineering Degree (2019), a civil engineer can

work in a variety of fields, they can be engineering managers on construction sites, or

they can work for consulting firms. Many civil engineers obtain their professional

engineering licenses and design in their own firms after they gain experience. There is a

lot of liability, so it is important to have the licensing in place to practice. Civil engineers

may also work in government jobs, which means more job security.

A study of Nick (2013) noted that as one of the oldest engineering disciplines,

civil engineering is responsible for maintaining society’s infrastructure, civil engineers

ensure safe construction, operation and maintenance of structures, such as roads,

bridges, buildings and dams but civil engineers have to keep this infrastructure running

effectively.
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Prospective civil engineers must complete a bachelor’s degree, which usually

takes about five years, as a student future civil engineers take basic courses in

mathematics, statistics and physics (William, 2018). Some of the students are having

difficulties in the particular subject especially the said subjects.

However, students are facing quite a lot of problem when it comes to studying.

They also need to take the licensure examination especially here in the Philippines in

order to be hired in a company (Vignesh, 2018).

One of the civil engineering student problems is that most of the professor lack

the necessary practical experience to relate fundamentals to practice and to give real

life examples. As a result, the students cannot relate theory with practice and apply their

knowledge to solve practical problems (Khaled, 2013).

Engineering graduates can benefit more when civil engineering courses are

taught by instructors that have both academic and practical experience. An instructor

with industry experience can motivate students, enable them to relate what was learned

in the class with the real world, and allow them to start developing their own engineering

judgment, which is essential for the successful practice of civil engineering (Khaled,

2013).

According to Decker (n.d.)civil engineering professors are important in our

society for our civil engineering students to learn quickly and to be able to advance

learning. The purpose of engineering teaching is to develop the student’s ability of

analysis, design, management, and engineering judgement, in addition to verifying their

understanding of engineering fundamentals. Professors of civil engineering have a great

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High School Department
role in preparation of the students. However, professors might face difficulties and

challenges.

Saidani(2015) claimed that one of the challenging experiences of professors of

civil engineering in school is an increasing number of civil engineering students joining a

course without having an appropriate understanding of mathematics.

Another one of the struggles of the teachers in civil engineering is lack of separate

computers and latest engineering software used in the industry as a significant problem

when trying to integrate practical teaching to a specific course because the cost of the

hardware and software is expensive so some universities cannot set up laboratories

because of the shortage of funds and lack of specialized technicians (Khaled, 2013).

Moreover, Isaia(2017) stated that there are some issues of teaching civil

engineering. There is no understanding between teachers and educational institutions in

relation to the preparation for performance in teaching consequently, even though

instructors know of their formative function, they do not believe in any specific

preparation to best perform it. They believe strongly that the years of studies obtained

will be enough to enable them to perform a good job as teachers.

Given all the complication of the civil engineering profession, this study aimed to

explore the specific struggles and experiences of civil engineer in the teaching realm.

The researchers provide insights on the nature of experiences may be encountered in

both professions.

Carrying out this research is the way to find answers on the things that are not

yet known, filling gaps in knowledge and changing norms or perceptions. This recent
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research was important because it presented the struggles and experiences that civil

engineers are facing nowadays. The primary beneficiaries of the findings of this study

are those who are interested in becoming civil engineers in the future. While civil

engineering firms and other institutions such as the government may also gain

knowledge from this study and finding out the measures, the battles and challenges that

are being encountered by civil engineers.

Making research study is the key to find answer that are unknown. This research

aims to find out the reasons why civil engineer choose to teach, and their experiences

and challenges in the field of teaching. The other possible work for professional civil

engineer. The primary recipients of the findings of this research are those professional

civil engineers and for those students who will take this course in the future.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to explore the experiences and struggle of civil engineers in the

teaching realm. The researchers seek to answer the following questions.

1. What is the nature of the work of a civil engineer?

2. What are the other possible careers to be undertaken by civil engineer?

3. What are reasons behind civil engineer who chose to teach?

4. What are their struggles as engineers turn into teacher?

5. What are their adjustments in their career as a teacher?

6. What are their realizations and learnings?

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METHODOLOGY

Research Design

The researchers will utilize qualitative design and phenomenological type of

research to explore the experiences and struggles of civil engineers in the teaching

field. Qualitative research was used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons,

opinions and motivations. It provides insights into the problem and helps in developing

ideas or hypothesis for potential qualitative research. It also involves critical thinking at

non-numerical data. Interviews can be conducted in person, by telephone, or via

internet (QRCA, 2017). Qualitative research gathers information that was non-numerical

in form. Examples of these are open-ended questionnaires and unstructured interviews.

Qualitative data was much easier to understand than quantitative data (McLeod, 2017).

Sampling Technique

The sampling technique method that will be used in this study is purposive

sampling which is a non-probability sampling. The individuals or group of individuals

that are expert and knowledgeable with a phenomenon of interest(Strauss & Corbin,

1990). The purposive sampling technique, also called judgement sampling is the

deliberate choice of a participant due to the qualities the participant possesses. (Erikan

I., Musa S. &Alkassim R.S). In this study, the researchers selected and civil engineers

based on their cultures of engineering, wide knowledge about teaching and experiences

in the field of civil engineer.

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Participants

The participants of this study are five civil engineers who chose to teach in

college. The criteria that we follow are the teacher must be a licensed civil engineer and

civil engineering license holder who took methods of teaching also they must have the

experiences with both professions.

Data Gathering procedure

The means of collection of data for this study that will be used is unstructured

interview. McLeod (2014) stated that unstructured interviews are also called non formal

interviews. This type of interview sometimes does not follow the given schedules that

are given to the interviewer. According to Cook (2011), the unstructured interview had

an advantage to the interviewer because the interviewer gathered more data through

the follow up questions and increased the validity of the data gathered because the

interviewer had freedom to ask more questions. The researchers used cellphone to

record the voice of the person being asked to gather the data and transcribed into

interview transcripts. After interviewing, the researchers extracted all the themes and

two (2) psychometricians and one (1) guidance staff member categorized the themes.

Data Analysis

Once the researchers gather all the needed information for the research, the

researchers will carefully analyze the different responses that they gathered from

participants in order to get results. The interview transcripts for this study will be

analyzed through content analysis. The University of Georgia (2012) stated that is

based on a research technique to make a research study more reliable and credible. By
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carefully assessing the text or documents, qualitative data can be converted into

quantitative data. As a result, researchers can recover and examine the subtle different

struggles, adjustments and triumphs of the civil engineer in the teaching realm. The

technique that will use is considered because the raw data were in the form of non-

quantifiable interview transcripts.

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