Bill Williams

Engineering education research has grown considerably as a field of inquiry over the last 20 years, particularly in the US, Europe and Australia. This study applies a scientometric approach to the contributions from Africa-affiliated authors to 19 engineering education research journals, 2004 - 2023. In the 385 journal articles published, South Africa was notably the most prolific contributor with 147 articles, followed by Egypt, Nigeria, Botswana and Tunisia. While this research output is comparable with that of other regions in the Global South, it remains significantly lower than that of regions in the Global North. It was noted that the annual average article output was 11 in the period up to 2015 whereas from that year onwards it rose to 28 per annum. Authors from South Africa and Botswana tended to co-author with colleagues from the US whereas those from Tunisia partnered with Saudi Arabian co-authors. The most common keywords were students, engineering education and E-learning. Three engineering education research centres were identified, two in South Africa and one in Nigeria. We believe that these findings can serve as a useful baseline to allow scholars to monitor the evolution of research in engineering education by African educators over future decades.

New theoretical perspectives on how engineers generate economic and social value have emerged from research on engineering practice, complementing the conventional entrepreneurship emphasis on innovation and start-up enterprises. This research demonstrated, apparently for the first time, how most engineers generate significant economic value with limited if any opportunities for innovation, research and development in their work. In the absence of appropriate theory, students acquire limited understanding on the contributions they will make to society as engineers. Observations from engineering practice provide a more compelling research-based narrative that could attract a more diverse student population, and help graduates secure well-paid employment. Many engineering faculty share uneasy feelings that their students will rarely use the advanced mathematical analysis techniques taught in classes. Research explains how practice solving traditional textbook problems builds tacit knowledge that enables rapid technical decision-making in engineering practice. The research also provides insights on how typical engineering science research supports engineering practice. We argue the benefits from widely disseminating the findings presented in this paper to help faculty staff and students better understand how they will contribute to our collective future. This can help overcome current significant engineering performance shortcomings in sustainability and productivity growth without major curriculum changes.

This paper contributes to the growing body of work that analyses the growth of engineering education research (EER) as a global field of inquiry. It uses a computer-aided process to compare the evolution of EER in Portugal and Spain. This is achieved by extracting the names of the Portuguese and Spanish authors that published in a sample of 12 different journals in the years 2018 and 2019 and then carrying out a computer-curated scientometric analysis of their complete publishing careers in both specialised engineering fields and in EER. For a sample of 50 Portuguese and 285 Spanish authors we present data taken from 14,121 publications that allow us to show the percentage of their publications that are educationally focused and how this in turn impacts their h-index. We also calculate how early in their career they published their first educational paper. Differences between researchers active in the field of EER from Portugal and Spain are identified, the most notable being the tendency for a large number of Spanish authors to publish in specific EER journals and we suggest possible explanations for the findings.

What is it like to study engineering in Ireland when you are female and you come from somewhere far away, in the Middle East, which has different social customs and norms? What is your lived experience? What aspects of the experience are common to Middle Eastern women across your course? As education researchers, we aim to understand the essence of the experience these foreign women have had studying engineering in Ireland-what life has been like for them and what unique challenges they have faced that may be invisible to us as instructors. This article reports preliminary analysis of 13 interviews that we conducted with eight women from Kuwait and Oman during their first three years studying engineering in Ireland. It is geared toward educators-teachers, administrative staff, and support providers-who want to better understand the experiences and perspectives of international students. The paper culminates with advice distilled from literature and our own analyses regarding how to support students working in groups, with an eye toward helping international students achieve success and feel supported and included.