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Modular Teaching Reform and Talent-Cultivation Pathways for Early-Career Civil Engineering Teachers in Vocational Undergraduate Programmes from the Perspective of New Engineering Education

Author(s)

Xinyue Wang, Xiaoli Lin

Affiliation(s)

Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology, Haikou, Hainan, China

Abstract

Vocational undergraduate education, an important component of the modern vocational education system, carries the core mission of cultivating high-level technical and skilled talent. As the construction industry upgrades towards smart construction, green low-carbon practice, and prefabricated applications, the New Engineering Education initiative requires that the talent-cultivation paradigm in civil engineering be reconstructed. Early-career teachers are the driving force behind teaching innovation, curriculum renewal, and the delivery of industry-education collaboration in vocational undergraduate institutions, yet some of them misread the purpose of their teaching role, have limited engineering practice behind them, are weak at developing modular courses, and are ill prepared to design instruction that integrates posts, courses, competitions, and certificates. These shortcomings constrain the substantive development of their programmes. Taking as its premise the positioning of vocational undergraduate education as a distinct type that unites vocational and higher-education attributes, this paper analyses the practical difficulties of civil engineering teaching and builds a reform system that combines four-dimensional modularisation, project-driven learning, and the integration of posts, courses, competitions, and certificates. It then explores pathways for strengthening early-career teachers' overall teaching competence through conceptual renewal, platform building, teaching-research communities, and digital empowerment. The study offers practical reference for raising the quality of civil engineering programmes in vocational undergraduate institutions and for building a tiered faculty of double-qualified early-career teachers, and provides a replicable model for teaching reform in comparable engineering programmes.

Keywords

New Engineering Education; Vocational Undergraduate Education; Civil Engineering; Early-Career Teachers; Modular Teaching; Post-Course-Competition-Certificate Integration.

References

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