The Need for Female Role Models in Engineering Education
The Need for Female Role Models in Engineering Education
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工程教育需要女性榜样
DOI：
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发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Ingrid Bauer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ingrid Bauer
与男性同行相比，女性在工程学领域的代表性相对较低，这可能与女性对自己的能力缺乏自信(Feld等人，1995)、严重的“学术不满”(Adelman，在Brainhard，Metz，&Gillmore，1999，第61页)、孤立感(Bergvall，Sorby，&Worten，1994)以及平衡工程事业与家庭生活的不确定性(Hynes，1992)有关。研究证实，女性的自我效能感水平低于男性(贝斯特菲尔德-萨克等人，2001年；费尔德等人，1995年；Zohar&Bronshtein，2005年)，由于缺乏自信，女性受益于更多的鼓励和认可。通过“像他们一样的人”(Lockwood，2006，p.36)证明成为一名工程师是可以实现的，这可能会建立未来女性工程师的信心。确定这一观点的有效性是本研究研究的重点。研究人员调查了强大的女性工程学教员是否可能是提高女性工程学学生录取率和坚持性的一种策略。一家机构的最初焦点小组(N=6)被用来创建一份调查，该调查被发送给八所中学后学院。有用的调查回复来自工程和技术专业的女本科生(N=382到508之间，取决于问题)，她们在第三年或以后学习。调查问题分为八类：人口统计学、榜样特征、教育环境中的需求、其他人满足的需求、对工程教育环境的看法、工程教育环境中的舒适度、教师的需求，以及如何有效地帮助学生成为工程专业的女性。数据分析结果表明，女教授数量较多的女学生自信程度更高，更少担心别人如何看待他们。
The relative under-representation of women in engineering compared to their male counterparts might be related to women’s lack of self-confidence in their abilities (Felder et al., 1995), serious “academic dissatisfaction” (Adelman, cited in Brainhard, Metz, & Gillmore, 1999, p. 61), feelings of isolation (Bergvall, Sorby, & Worthen, 1994), and the uncertainty of balancing an engineering career with family life (Hynes, 1992). Studies have confirmed that females have a lower level of self-efficacy than males (Besterfield-Sacre et al., 2001; Felder et al., 1995; Zohar & Bronshtein, 2005), and because of this lack of self-confidence, females benefit from increased encouragement and validation. Demonstrating that becoming an engineer is attainable by “someone like them” (Lockwood, 2006, p. 36) might build prospective female engineers’ confidence. Determining the validity of this idea was the focus of this research study. The researcher examined whether or not strong female engineering faculty members might be a strategy to increase the admission and persistence of female engineering students. An initial focus group (N = 6) at one institution was used to create a survey that was sent to eight postsecondary institutions. Usable survey responses came from female undergraduate engineering and technology students (N = between 382 and 508, depending on the question) in their third year of study or beyond. Survey questions fell into eight categories: demographics, role model characteristics, needs in an educational environment, needs fulfilled by other people, views on the engineering education environment, level of comfort in the engineering education environment, needs from an instructor, and views of how effective scenarios might be for helping a student feel more comfortable and confident being a female in engineering. Results of data analysis suggest that female students with greater numbers of female professors have higher levels of self-confidence and worry less about how others view them.