Guidance from the Senior Engineers during the Undergraduate Training-A Case Study

Abstract

Senior Engineers have an ethical responsibility to enhance the engineering knowledge and professional experience of trainee engineers who work under their authority through proper supervision and guidance. This research paper investigates the incidents where senior engineers have neglected such kinds of responsibilities as perceived by final year engineering students of a state university in Sri Lanka during their industrial training period as a case study followed with a qualitative survey. An open-ended question was given to 200 final year engineering undergraduates of a state university in Sri Lanka as per the convenient sampling strategy to describe any ethical violation observed or experienced by them during their industrial training. Only 30% had reported such incidents while the rest of the incidents belong to the violation of health and safety practices and integrity issues in engineering practice. Incidents which only belong to less supportive behaviour of senior engineers were selected and analyzed following inductive thematic analysis. This study reveals the emergence of 4 major themes. They are the senior engineers’ unwillingness to guide, assigning inappropriate tasks, unnecessarily blaming and negligence of training schedules. One-sided data collection is the major drawback of this research and further investigations can be done to identify the possible causes for the less supportive behaviour by having a few interviews with selected senior engineers in the industry. The outcomes of this case study will raise the awareness of senior engineers regarding their ethical responsibilities in guiding and supervision of trainee engineers to ensure proper professional development.