Informing Simulator-Based Maritime Education and Training: A Multi-Level Analysis of Curriculum Practices and Policies

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation examines how simulator-based Maritime Education and Training (MET) curricula are designed and enacted within higher education. The study focuses on how educational, institutional, and regulatory factors shape the organisation and use of simulators in maritime programmes. The thesis is structured as an article-based dissertation comprising three interrelated qualitative studies. It adopts an interpretive research design and draws on document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observations conducted across four Norwegian MET institutions, complemented by interviews with international maritime policy stakeholders. Together, the studies address simulator-based education from the perspectives of curriculum, pedagogy, and regulation. The first study, Factors Impacting Curricula in Maritime Simulator-Based Education, examines how simulator-integrated curricula are conceptualised and organised within MET programmes. The study introduces a curriculum concept map that illustrates how regulatory requirements, programme structures, and pedagogical practices are brought together in the enactment of the curriculum. The second study, Formative Assessment in Maritime Simulator-Based Higher Education, investigates formative assessment practices in simulator-based teaching. It focuses on how briefing, simulation exercises, and debriefing are used in practice to support feedback, reflection, and learning during simulator-based instruction. The third study, Stakeholder Perspectives on the Comprehensive Review of the IMO STCW Convention and Code, examines how stakeholders involved in the ongoing STCW comprehensive review describe the role of simulation and regulation in relation to educational practice and technological development. The three studies provide an empirically grounded account of simulator-based MET as it is currently practised and discussed within maritime higher education. The thesis contributes by documenting how curriculum organisation, assessment practices, and stakeholder perspectives are connected across different educational and regulatory contexts. It offers structured insights that support reflection and further research on simulator-based education in regulated professional higher education.