The purpose of this study is to provide insight into contemporary use of inscriptions, which include visual representations such as equations, tables, graphs, diagrams, and photographs, in representing a specific transportation engineering concept (sight distance) within three types of textual resources. These textual resources (textbooks, course notes, and referential texts used in practice) provide a means to compare the use of inscriptions across academic and workplace settings. Past research and theoretical work point toward a connection between situated learning and visual representations, noting its role in providing social and material context to learning. This study adds to this literature by investigating the current use of inscriptions regarding a specific concept (sight distance) utilized within transportation engineering education. Content analysis is utilized as a methodology in order to explore two issues regarding inscriptions: relative importance (as reflected by prevalence) of inscriptions within two different settings (practice and academia) and the degree of abstractness reflected by inscriptions based on Roth, Shaw, and Tobin's inscriptional chain. This study revealed that the distribution amongst different types of inscriptions contrasted amongst the three types of textual resources. These findings provide insight into ways in which engineering educators may bridge the gap between academic and practical settings: 1) by adopting inscriptions that reflect levels of abstractness of textual resources utilized in practice, and 2) by introducing a more varied mix of visual representations that span across various different types of inscriptions. Further, this exploratory study provides data and a protocol for further exploring the relationships between situated learning, contexts, and the materials (inclusive of visual representations) that are used in learning and work settings.
