Reviewing the trends of construction education research in the last decade: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Discussions around construction education (CE) and engineering education (EE) have continued to stimulate the interest of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), policymakers, researchers, parents, educators, and even students alike. This is because the future generation of construction professionals and project managers are dependent on the quality and content of CE received during undergraduate education. This study reviews the concept of CE research published on the Elsevier Scopus database from 2010 to 2020 using a sequence of bibliometric analysis. The study adopted a bibliometric approach to extract papers from the Elsevier Scopus database. Keywords such as “construction education” OR “engineering education” OR “construction management education” OR “construction management teaching” AND “construction industry” were used for article extraction. VOSviewer, a text-mining tool was used to analyze the bibliometric connection in CE research within the built environment discipline. Through the sequencing of cluster analysis, the findings revealed that focus is placed on Student-centred learning (SCL), Building Information Modelling (BIM), Sustainability, Active Learning (AL), Virtual reality (VR), and Project Management (PM). More so, the current research focus in CE studies is tending towards the knowledge and adoption of lean construction (LC) into construction industry activities processes. Despite the novelty of this article, generalisations of the results must be done cautiously due to the use of a single data base, which in this case is the Elsevier’s Scopus. This bibliometric study contributes to the ever-growing body of scholarly knowledge as it brings to the fore the various research focus areas of CE studies within the built environment.

Keywords:

• Built environment
• construction education
• construction industry
• engineering education
• fourth industrial revolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.