CAREER - Achieving Diversity in Engineering Education: Cultivating Student Self-Efficacy

在工程教育中实现职业多元化：培养学生的自我效能许多从本科工程和科学专业毕业的女性比那些留下来的女性更不相信自己的能力，尽管她们的成绩相似。那些留下来的人对自己能力的评价低于他们的男同事。由于自我效能信念与动机、表现、保持和职业成功相关，机构和基金会赞助了旨在提高女性工程自我效能的干预措施的开发。然而，研究还没有试图理解具体的效能信念是如何形成的，以及学习环境的不同方面如何影响这些信念。使用注重个人意义的方法论，就像定性方法一样，对于解决这类问题特别重要。评估和描述工科本科生的自我效能感。测量自我效能感信念与学生成绩、兴趣和留存的相关性。描述工程学习环境如何促进或破坏积极的信念形成和过程，学生通过这些过程形成自我效能信念。确定学生的效能感水平、学习环境的影响以及学生形成效能感信念的过程如何随着学生在本科工程课程中的进步而变化，以及这些变化如何因性别和工程学科而异。制定、实施、评估和改进课程实践，使学生能够并鼓励他们准确地评估自己的能力。向工程、科学、技术和教育心理学领域的教员、受训教员、顾问和管理人员传播研究结果和实践将采用混合方法。威尔大学的两组男女工科学生在大一到大四期间接受了纵向采访和调查。将观察工程学讲座和复习课的样本；采访工程学教师；分析课程材料，使结果能够跨方法三角测量。教育计划包括开发和测试提高工科学生自我效能感的课程实践。将通过开发、提供和评估讲习班和研究生级别的工程课程来促进这些做法的使用。这项工作将受到社会认知理论的启发。

CAREER- Achieving Diversity in Engineering Education:Cultivating Student Self-EfficacyMany women who leave undergraduate engineering and science programs believe less in their capabilitiesthan those who stay, despite earning similar grades. Those who stay have a lower opinion of theircapabilities than their male colleagues. Because self-efficacy beliefs correlate with motivation,performance, retention, and professional success, agencies and foundations have sponsored thedevelopment of interventions designed to promote women's self-efficacy in engineering. However,research has not sought to understand how specific efficacy beliefs are formed and how different aspectsof the learning environment influence these beliefs. Using methodology that focuses on personalmeanings, as qualitative approaches do, is particularly important for addressing these types of questions.Project ObjectivesThis project will. Assess and describe undergraduate engineering student self-efficacy beliefs. Measure correlations of self-efficacy beliefs with student achievement, interest, and retention. Characterize how the engineering learning environment facilitates or undermines positive belief formation and processes by which students form their self-efficacy beliefs. Identify how student levels of efficacy, the influences of the learning environment, and the processes by which students form their efficacy beliefs change as students progress through their undergraduate engineering programs and how these changes vary by gender and engineering discipline. Develop, implement, assess, and refine course practices that enable and encourage students to accurately assess their abilities . Disseminate findings and practices to faculty, faculty-in-training, advisors, and administrators in the fields of engineering, science, technology, and educational psychologyA mixed-method approach will be used. Two cohorts of male and female engineering students at will be interviewed and surveyed longitudinally in their freshman through senior years. A sample of engineering lectures and recitation classes will be observed; engineering instructors, interviewed; and course materials, analyzed, enabling across-methods triangulation of results. The education plan includes commitments to develop and test course practices that promote engineering student self-efficacy. The use of these practices will be promoted through the development, delivery, and assessment of workshops and a graduate-level engineering course. The work will be informed by social cognitive theory.