Structural surface-achieving model in the teaching and learning process for construction engineering students

Education is a systematic teaching-learning process involving four main components (teachers, students, knowledge, and the environment) and three main subprocesses (teaching, learning, and evaluation). Throughout the education process, students' learning is considered as the core subprocess, though various interactions are involved among the variables in the components. The surface-achieving learning approach (achieving motive and surface strategy) is not generally recommended by educational psychologists, but it is the most popular learning approach used by construction engineering students in Hong Kong. In order to investigate the reasons for this phenomenon, a structural surface-achieving learning model is established that includes key learning factors. In this paper, teaching approach, learning approach (achieving motive and surface strategy), year of study, gender, performance, and satisfaction are all considered as major elements of the teaching-learning process. Using the LISREL program, three optimized structural equation models were established separately for the three teaching approaches (transferring, shaping, and traveling). The study confirmed a partial causal relationship among the hypothetical variables and revealed six interesting points: (1) shaping is an exogenous variable that has the least effect on the surface-achieving learning approach among the three teaching approaches; (2) the traveling teaching approach, like the transferring and shaping teaching approaches, causes students to adopt the surface strategy in the learning process; (3) good performance can be obtained even though the surface strategy is adopted by construction students in Hong Kong; (4) students' performance is a factor encouraging or discouraging educators to use the traveling teaching approach in construction education; (5) satisfaction is an essential variable that induces students to learn with an achieving motive; and (6) female construction students often perform better than their male counterparts.