Construction and engineering Higher Education: the role of pracademics in recoupling classical experiential educational norms

This chapter considers the development of construction and engineering education that historically chartered an increasingly decoupled trajectory from being ostensibly practical in nature, to include progressively more theoretical instruction. This decoupling incrementally severed the ‘Vitruvian’ tradition of combining workplace industry practice with supplementary theoretical instruction (e.g. apprenticeships). Indeed, over the last half century, construction and engineering education has become increasingly theoretical, and is now arguably delivered by academic staff with little practical experience of the discipline. This is arguably detrimental to those learning an inherently vocational subject, and perhaps understandably, calls to recouple theory and practice have recently gained traction, through vehicles such as Higher Education Apprenticeships (termed Graduate Apprenticeships in Scotland, and Degree Apprenticeships in England and Wales). Whilst largely seen as positive, such recoupling may potentially create problems for the current staff base that are often characterised as ‘career academics’ with often limited ‘real world’ experience. Conversely, academics with industrial experience (or pracademics) are arguably better equipped to bridge theory and practice. Yet, ‘pracademics’ frequently feel an insecurity of identity associated with ‘imposter syndrome’ in a research dominated Higher Education (HE) context. Conversely however, rather than being imposters, we argue ‘pracademics’ in fact have a lineage going back centuries. We highlight the important role that pracademics play in bridging theory and practice and allude to their importance in achieving high quality, contextualised student focused experiential learning that is set to be an increasingly important aspect of HE provision.