Engineering education (Research) in european countries - An overview based on publications in journals

Abstract

The interest in Engineering Education (EE) and Engineering Education Research (EER) has been increasing all around the world. Nevertheless, it is not easy to understand what is the current state of the art of engineering education based on research that is being made in specific regions of the world. Considering that engineering educators are practitioners of EE and sometimes also researchers in EER subfields, this discussion paper aims to make an analysis of the state of the art with respect to EER in European countries, higher education institutions, authors and journals. The approach chosen was to make an exploratory study based on document research using Elsevier Scopus indexing service. Considering the Scopus database, the time threshold was defined as 1970 to 2017. Using the search-term 'engineering education' was possible to identify 19074 journal documents, being 4604 from European affiliated authors. Based on the study the authors conclude that EER is growing in Europe and have outreached the USA in the last years, but the relative position to the whole world is decreasing. Additionally, it was possible to identify the most prolific authors, countries and institutions. Notable, in the last 10 years Spain become the country with the higher number of published papers. The analysis of the keywords showed that there is a strong focus in computer-based tools to support engineering education. A few top authors have been focusing in specific areas of the curriculum processes, namely in Problem and project-based learning.