CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Different reading materials have a huge contribution in terms of collecting

significant facts and information that are needed in this study. These data may be

connected with this study. In this chapter, previous studies that are created by other

researchers, involving journals, facts, and other researches, are reviewed. These data

may give additional facts on the research being studied.

Related Literature

According to Myles Boylan (2006), the evidence about student interesting

engineering studies and careers is quite mixed. It is not as negative as suggested in

places in the recent ACT Policy Report “Maintaining a Strong Engineering Workforce”

(by Richard Noeth, Ty Cruce, and Matt Harmston, ACT 2003). One passage in this

report does match the information in the above graph: “The percentage of potential

engineering majors among various minority groups improved over the past twelve

years, but the increase was due in large part to a decrease in the number of

Caucasians who planned to major in engineering. In fact, the number of minority

students planning to major engineering has dropped. The actual number of African

American and American Indian engineering majors was lower in 2002 than in 1991

(African Americans reached a low of 6,993 in 2002).” This accounting does not,

however, adjust for the growing percentage of ACT test-takers who did not respond to

questions about planned college majors. (This report is generally very informative and

contains a wealth of information on both the academic preparation and interest of

different demographic groups.) Nor is the evidence as rosy as described in an online

publication “Enrollment Records are Here – Degrees to Arrive Soon” (Copyright 2003 by

Engineering Trends, Houghton, MI 49931): “This report is aimed at providing an insight

into what now appears to be an oncoming period of substantial degree growth at

bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree [levels]. New degree records in all three

degrees appear highly probably in the near future.” To the extent that this prediction is

correct, it will depend on rising enrolments generally to pull up the engineering numbers.

Karoly M.S. (2013) stated that the first and two years of studying engineering

should be devoted to gaining an overview of engineering and should cover the major

fields available to the students, so that students are given enough time and exposure to

discover their true call. There is a wrong demand to make this salutary system more

widespread than now.

Each engineering specialty requires distinct trails for a person to be successful in

that career. A good academic record in mathematics and physics alone will not

guarantee that one will excel in just any engineering field. The current practice of not

taking into account the natural abilities, learning capacity and career objectives of the

candidate in choosing an engineering course is undesirable. Such a choice may not be

out of sync with the personality traits of the student, and may also not indicate the actual

scope which the various engineering careers provide.

Whether to go for engineering or not entirely depends upon your personality type,

intellectual profile and goals. So you have to take stock of your abilities, skills and
interests, identify your personality type and match with the appropriate job profile. In

general, if you are the type of person who enjoys taking things apart and putting them

back together as well as figuring out how things work, and is serious about studying,

you are a strong candidate for engineering.

It goes without saying that you should be good in mathematics and physics to

pursue engineering. Because engineers spend much of their time solving problems, a

strong engineering candidate should enjoy and excel at problem solving in physics and

mathematics, especially on topics in his field of interest. This is all the more so since

most of the selection tests for engineering jobs are problematic in nature. A flair of

graphics, darfting and design, and proficiency with computers are helpful as well.

As stated by Christine Cunningham and Cathy Lachapelle (2005), The top six

student choices of what engineers do are all rooted in activities that focus on

construction, building, machinery, and vehicles, which suggests that students are

identifying them as engineering based on their association with these attributes, not

based on the type of work engineers do. Students strongly conflate construction

workers and auto mechanics with engineers. While this is understandable (engineering

has the word engine in it), it are also concerning, especially since these are fields that

are not traditionally populated by women. Thus, these conceptions might be one reason

for the lower number of girls that enter engineering than boys. Students’ identification of

engineering with civil engineering is also illustrated by this survey. While machines,

factories, construction, and building all ranked high (regardless of whether people were
supervising, improving, or designing or working as a tradesperson), the lack of

understanding about the breadth of the fields of engineering begins to be captured by

the survey. Children are more likely to think that engineers clean teeth than design ways

to clean water! This suggests that much more education is needed to help children

understand the range of the type of work engineers do. Fewer than third of the students

recognized one of the central features of engineering – design. Proceedings of the 2005

American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright

© 2005, American Society for Engineering Education to better assess the degree to

which students understand the range of types of engineering, we have now modified the

survey and replaced half of the six items that focused on machinery and construction

with items that reflect other engineering fields such as chemical and biomedical

engineering. We hypothesize that students will not recognize these disciplines as

engineering. It is clear that for the majority of students, technology is closely linked with

power and electricity. While was also expected and is certainly understandable, it

presents a narrow (and developed country’s) view of technology. Less than a third of

the students identified any of the everyday human-made objects as technology. Clearly

students need to be educated about what technology is and the prevalence of

technology not only in our society, but also in societies across the world. The

statistical results of these surveys have helped us to identify some conceptions and

misconceptions that students hold. We have modified the engineering survey to further

probe the range of students’ understandings and in the future months we plan to

conduct interviews with students to get more in-depth information about how and why

they are thinking about engineering and technology. We are also using these two
survey instruments in two additional ways. First, because of the surveys are nuanced,

we can use them as a measure of students’ growth in understanding. Thus, we will

administer these instruments again at the end of the school year annually to the same

students to assess how their knowledge has changed and what effect, if any, of our

curricular program has had on their knowledge. Second, we have begun to use these

assessments with our teachers to evaluate what they think engineering and technology

are and how these understandings change. Based on these uses, we believe that these

instruments provide one way to assess what students think and how their perceptions

change. We hope that the findings from this first study can be used by educators and

curriculum developers to help them design materials and pedagogical techniques that

address students’ misconceptions and help them to develop an understanding of

technology and engineering that is more robust and accurate.

“Identify your true interests, and selecting an engineering specialty becomes

worlds easier. If you end up in an area you’re excited about, you’ll be much more likely

to excel and willing to put in the hard work needed to be an expert in your field, and

you’ll certainly enjoy the results of your work. If you feel that you don’t know enough

about the various engineering fields to make a decision, don’t panic, talk to

upperclassmen about their classes and their career plans. Think about global issues

you care about, and what disciplines might be relevant to them.” says Eric Grimson

(2011), MIT chancellor, the Bernard Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering, and

former department head in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

 Sonny K. Siu (2013) indicated that a flexible career path and positive job outlook

are among the benefits of pursuing job in engineering.

1. Large selection of engineering paths gives career flexibility.

Entering an engineering program opens the door to multiple branches of

engineering. Many schools require the student to complete a general first-year

curriculum (math, science, English, and computer skills) before moving forward in an

engineering specialty. This allows the student to explore and firm up his or her

engineering interest. A typical college may have the following engineering majors:

aeronautics and astronautics, agricultural, biological and food processing, biomedical,

chemical, civil, computer, construction, electrical, environmental and ecological,

materials, mechanical, and nuclear.

All engineering majors lead to careers in sub disciplines. The IEEE lists 38

technical societies related to electrical engineering alone.

2. Engineering occupations are high-paying.

In a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) The Editor’s Desk (TED) report,

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations were classified

as high-paying. The mean annual wage for all STEM occupations was $77,880; only 4

of the 97 STEM occupations were below the U.S. average of $43,460. The highest

paying STEM occupations of $100,000 include managerial, petroleum engineers, and

physicists. The BLS reports that civil engineers made $77,506/year (2010) or
$37.29/hour, mechanical engineers made $77,560/year (2012) or $38.74/hour, and

electrical engineers made $87,920/year (2012) or $42.27/hour. The bachelor of science

degree is the entry-level education requirement. The National Society of Professional

Engineers (NSPE)’s 2013 Engineering Income and Salary Survey reported that the

average income of respondents was $95,420. The range from engineer level I through

VIII was $55,500 to $156,000.

3. Engineers’ job outlook is positive.

The BLS’s June 15, 2011, TED report indicated that technical jobs in STEM

represented approximately 6% of U.S. employment (nearly 8 million jobs). The largest

STEM occupations were computer support specialists, computer systems analysts, and

computer software engineers; each had employment of approximately 500,000.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook projects positive job growth from 2010

to 2020. Employment for civil engineers is expected to grow 19% from 262,800 to

313,900; mechanical

engineers is expected to grow 9% from 243,000 to 264,500; and electrical engineers is

expected to grow 6% from 294,000 to 311,600.

4. Engineers’ work is fun.

Civil engineers plan, design, construct, and manage physical infrastructure such

as buildings, bridges, tunnels, transportation systems, wastewater treatment systems,

coastal and ocean facilities, and public works. Mechanical engineers apply principles of

mechanics, dynamics, and energy transfer to the design and analysis of complex
buildings and to the testing and manufacture of machines, engines, power generating

equipment, vehicles, artificial components for the human body, and other products.

Electrical engineers apply engineering concepts to power generation,

transmission, and distribution of power. At the building infrastructure level this includes

standby generators, transformers, switchgear, protective devices, and uninterruptible

power supplies.

5. Engineering work is challenging.

Engineers work in a professional environment where there is an opportunity to

learn and grow through on-the-job and formal training using the most up-to-date

technologies. There will never be a shortage of new challenges, as engineers are

constantly faced with having to adapt solutions and change technology to move with the

trends and needs.

Based on the above reasons, if any young person has strong STEM aptitudes,

has completed the STEM coursework, and has a desire to work in problem solving and

help the world, entering the engineering program is the right choice as a means to a

better life economically, job satisfaction, and a good career.

According to Dr. Haynes (2015), this research argues for the systematic inclusion

of social science and humanities knowledge in engineering for K-12 students, and it has

developed illustrative examples of what appealing to the humanistic side of engineering

can look like in a classroom setting. These examples are drawn from interactions

among student teams from elementary classrooms engaged in engineering activities

that demonstrate that engineering is about solving problems for people with teams of

people. This work has yielded ideas for research in the education of K-12 students,

including work in understanding students’ attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions, particularly

among traditionally underrepresented populations, and in exploring how students’

engineering knowledge and practices develop in the context of people – centered

approach to engineering. Work on integrating engineering and literacy in elementary

classrooms has used children’s fiction – typically focusing on problems that characters

are facing – as rich context for students to design something for the characters.

Research questions include: What do beginnings of engineering look like in the

elementary setting? Does providing a literary context support engineering design

practices? The people – centered approach not only portrays engineering as a caring

profession but also highlights women and people of colour as engineers, in order to

broaden perceptions of who can be an engineer.

According to Dr. Maria – Isabel Carnasciali, Amy E. Thompson, Mr. Terance

Joshua Thomas (2013), the development and application of a new survey instrument to

understand the choice of engineering major decision. Next steps in the research plan

include conducting follow – up interviews with survey participants and further

development of the survey instrument for the purposes of creating a reliable, accurate

tool that can be used to assess the choice of engineering major decision at the

University. In the future, this instrument could be adopted for use by other engineering

schools in order to collect generalizable data for the choice of engineering major

decision. This study has some limitations. Because female respondents are such a
small population, it may be necessary to collect data over several incoming classes to

see if patterns occur or support conclusions related to this small population size. Also,

some majors have low enrolments or acquire small numbers of students who transfer

into those programs. Again, it may be necessary to collect data over several incoming

classes to support finding in this study in a more conclusive way.

According to Asha Weinstein Agrawal and Jennifer Dill (2008), the transportation

industry faces a growing shortage of professional engineers. A key strategy in solving

this problem will be to encourage more civil engineering students to specialize in

transportation while completing their undergraduate degree, so that employers have a

larger pool of likely recruits. This examines the factors that lead civil engineering

undergraduates to specialize in transportation, as opposed to other civil engineering sub

– disciplines. The primary method used was a web – based survey of over 1,800 civil

engineering undergraduates. The study results are used to recommend steps that the

transportation community can take to increase the number of civil engineering

undergraduate who choose to specialize in transportation.

In the book ‘Engineering a Safer World’ by Nancy G. Leveson, engineering has

experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineering techniques applied in

safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, have changed very

little over the years.

 The book, “Engineering: An Introduction for High School”, engineering is a

human endeavor. Humans have engaged in engineering to meet their needs as long as

they have had needs. We invent and innovate when we are confronted with problems,

needs, and desires. Inventions exist and continue to be created to meet our needs for

daily life, such as access to water, energy, transportation, and entertainment. Petroski

(2004) said, “Making things is an activity as old as civilization, and making ever new

things is part of being human.” Our lives are permeated with technological inventions

that humans have engineered. Yet, the fundamental nature of engineering or what

engineers do is not everyday knowledge. For instance, many of us are unfamiliar with

the basic principles used to build the systems that deliver water, gas, or electricity to our

homes.

Engineering is the design, analysis, and creation of things that are practical and

useful in our lives. At its core, engineering incorporates design. Design, simply put, is

creating something that has not existed before. Engineers help design, create or

change almost everything we encounter in our lives, including what we feel, eat, see,

and hear.

As stated by Eleri, B., et al. (2015), mathematics has been identified as an area

of concern for engineering. One significant factor preventing students studying

engineering is lack of mathematical expertise.

As stated by Maqsud Sulaiman Karoly (2013), Civil engineering is the oldest and

the “real” engineering field. Due to its high application, since construction is ubiquitous,

civil engineering provides the highest number of job openings after IT anywhere in the
world. Fresh graduates can find job and work experience comparatively easily. It

provides excellent scope for people – management with large number of engineers,

supervisors, and laborers coming under a project leader. It also provides very good

opportunities for experienced persons even after retirement, as project leaders etc.

There are also ample opportunities for private practice, self-employment, contract work

and real-estate business in Civil engineering.

“A major focus area in engineering education research has been improving the

levels of retention, persistence, and recruitment of engineering students. Reasons for

students to enter engineering programs include the influence of family, high school

teachers, and peers; previous success in math and science courses; and interests in

the career track as stated by Seymour & Hewitt. The large-scale study investigated

relationships between choice of a science, math, or engineering major and the

likelihood of degree completion in the chosen major. The authors identified that those

who choose an engineering field based on personal interest were more likely to persist

than those who choose the same major for reasons such as family influence and prior

success in math and science courses.” Recent work by Matusovich et al.In 1996, Lent,

Brown and Hackett,7 proposed a concentric model of environmental layers that

surround the person and form the context for his or her career behavior. Furthermore, a

person with interest in a particular career path is unlikely to pursue that path if the

individual perceives barriers to entering or advancing in that career. Perceived barriers

include internal factors (such as confidence in ability to manage the difficult situations

that may arise) and external factors (such as ability to obtain student loans).
 “Reasons for students to enter engineering programs include the influence of

family, high school teachers, and peers; previous success in math and science courses;

and interests in the career track”, stated by Seymour & Hewitt.

According to Bennet, C., et al. (2016), the majority of students self-assessed and

determined them to be fit for success within the engineering field based on their

previous academic performances in and enjoyment of mathematics and science

courses. Many students sought engineering as a major in which the math and science

could be combined.

According to Eleri, B., et al. (2015), mathematics has been identified as an area

of concern for engineering. One significant factor preventing students studying

engineering is lack of mathematical expertise.

According to Bennet, C., et al. (2016), there is a need to critically examine how

learner agency as effective engineers (i.e. in practical and moral sense) is

interconnected with the way educators validate and support learner development in

engineering. For example, a previous study found that students valued social

responsibility in different levels of priority based on which engineering discipline they

were being trained in (Canney, 2015). It says that engineering students would be

prepared and will learn what they should know if there is someone, who is

knowledgeable about engineering, that would guide, support, encourage, and give them

more knowledge and ideas to become successful.

According to Baker, D., et al. (2010), humans have engaged engineering to meet

their needs as long they have had needs. It states that people have taken up in
engineering because they have needs in their life. As a successful engineer, they have

obligations in their life to fulfill.