The use of Andragogy in civil construction capacity building courses

Abstract The lack of skilled labor is a major constraint within the civil construction sector. Major works on the subject show that despite the increasing efforts to improve the workforce in recent years, many have proven unsatisfactory. Given employers’ high demand for qualified employees, we created a training program based on Andragogy, a theory for adult learning. There are numerous contributions to the field literature seeking to understand how adults learn, but they fail to provide practical applications of Andragogy, mainly regarding continuous professional education. Thus, we followed training programs focused on construction workers in order to analyze whether andragogical assumptions have been employed. Questionnaires were applied to determine the degree to which students apply each principle of learning for adults. Next, we developed a training program for structural masonry, divided into two courses in order to identify difficulties and the application of Andragogy through the actions proposed. This enables us to endorse the importance of taking this theory into consideration in courses focused on civil construction, since satisfactory outcomes were reached in terms of learning and motivation for participation in the program.