United States Department of Transportation
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Edition:Final report; Dec. 2010-June 2012.
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Abstract:Substantial research in a diversity of fields suggests that being successful in a skilled profession requires ways of thinking that
are unique to the context of that profession and present in practitioners of that field. Two critical concepts are sight distance and
stopping sight distance as applied to highway geometric design. These concepts play important roles in designing highway
horizontal and vertical curves, establishing safe speed limits, and safe traffic signal timing. The purpose of this study is to
characterize instructors’ and engineers’ embedded knowledge of highway geometric design sight distance and stopping sight
distance and similarly examine course materials. Individual interviews were conducted with 29 transportation engineers and 19
transportation instructors. Course notes from a selection of instructors and three commonly used textbooks were also analyzed.
Although instructors and practitioners expressed similar content knowledge, there were significant differences in the context in
which it was embedded. Engineering practitioners used and referred to software, manuals, and specific experiences, while
instructors primarily spoke in a more abstract context, or referred to textbooks. Also, engineers discussed methods to mitigate
minimum design criteria violations; this was not found in course notes or textbooks. This research strongly suggests that contextdependent
embedded knowledge exists in transportation engineering and efforts are necessary to integrate this knowledge in the
curriculum.
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