Teaching for innovation competence in higher education Built Environment engineering classrooms: teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of the learning environment

ABSTRACT

In this study we investigated teachers’ beliefs about innovation competence relevance and their creative self-efficacy and compared teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the learning environment in the Built Environment engineering education domain. In total, 94 teachers participated in this study by completing a questionnaire. Teachers perceived their creative self-efficacy and the learning environment in their classrooms to be supportive of innovation competence. However, only a minority of the teachers considered teaching for innovation competence relevant; most teachers perceived a focus on innovation competence in the curriculum as neutral. Multiple regression analyses showed that teachers’ creative self-efficacy beliefs significantly predicted their perception personal relevance. Similarly, perception of focus on innovation competence in the curriculum significantly predicted perceived uncertainty, while creative self-efficacy significantly predicted perceived knowledge-building through teacher–student and student–student negotiation. Findings of the study are discussed with respect to developing students’ innovation competence in the Built Environment education domain.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers’ learning environment perceptions
• innovation competence
• creative self-efficacy
• built environment engineering education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

A. R. Ovbiagbonhia is in the Hanze Universities of Applied Sciences Groningen, The Netherlands.

Bas Kollöffel is in the University of Twente, Enschede. The Netherlands.

Perry Den Brok is in the Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen. The Netherlands.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Organisation for Scientific Research of the Netherlands: [grant number 023.006.028].