An exploration of unlearning of practicing civil engineers

Abstract

This Research to Practice Work in Progress Paper presents an exploration of unlearning of practicing civil engineers. Unlearning is a necessary process to keep engineers abreast of ever-changing socio-technical and professional demands by replacing odd knowledge with a new one, which is coherent with their knowledge structures and practice contexts. This paper explores the unlearning of fundamental engineering concepts within 95 practicing civil engineers by investigating their performances on and attitudes towards Statics Concept Inventory. The analysis of their performances on the inventory revealed that many of them did not retain, use, and need this fundamental engineering concept in their practices. It appears that when engineers begin their professional careers, they also start giving up parts of their learned knowledge including many fundamental engineering concepts to acquire new knowledge suitable to their expertise and practice contexts of teams and organizations.