Developing An Instrument To Measure Tinkering And Technical Self Efficacy In Engineering

An instrument to measure tinkering and technical self-efficacy was developed based on recommendations by Bandura. Self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s beliefs about their ability to engage in activities that will result in successfully attaining specific goals. Thus, selfefficacy is context and skills specific rather than a global judgment of ability. Tinkering and technical self-efficacy in engineering are important because individuals with low self-efficacy in these areas are more likely to leave engineering majors independent of their levels of achievement. This is especially true for women. Consequently, the development of an instrument with good predictive power can be a useful tool for creating interventions for retention in engineering majors. The first phase of this study to develop a predictive instrument was to establish the content validity. During this phase, we used two open-ended questions asking the respondents to identify tinkering and technical skills. Eight hundred and seventy-one statements were obtained from a volunteer expert sample of 101 respondents. A count of statements with the same meaning was conducted and the most frequently mentioned were used to write questions. Approximately half were worded positively and half negatively. The tinkering and technical scales each consisted of 30 questions. The second phase of the study started with the development of a Likert-scale survey using these statements. The instrument was given in freshman design classes (n=84 students). Students were asked to rate themselves on a Likert scale from not descriptive of me (0) to very descriptive of me (5). The analysis indicated that students had moderate self-efficacy in terms of technical skills. Mean item scores were between 3.2 and 3.7. Students rejected negatively worded items on both scales as not descriptive with mean scores between 0 and 2. Students reported the least technical self-efficacy on the item “I can statistically model a process”. Ratings on the tinkering scale included items with means scores above 4.0. These items were: “I can think outside the box”, “I know how to use tools”, I want to know how things work and how to make them better”, and “I have the persistence to complete a project”. The reliability of the tinkering scale was .87 and the reliability of the technical scale was .80. A factor analysis found three factors for tinkering. Factor one was labeled knowledge and experience, factor two creativity and curiosity and factor three knowledge and skills. There were also three factors for technical skills. Factor one was labeled technical knowledge, factor two understanding theories and models and factor three systems and how things work. introduction The purpose of this research was to develop an instrument to measure tinkering and technical self-efficacy in engineering. Such an instrument has many uses among which are identifying students who many enter engineering with low self-efficacy or students whose self-efficacy declines as they study engineering. Efficacy measures must be tailored to specific domains and their specific skill sets. Data about students’ tinkering and technical self-efficacy can then be used to design specific interventions. Such interventions are important because low self-efficacy in engineering is related to leaving engineering majors and is more common among women students than men students. P ge 13392.2 literature review Self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s beliefs about their ability to engage in activities that will result in successfully attaining specific goals. It is a set of context specific beliefs about competence rather than beliefs about general ability. It is not the number of skills you have but what you believe you can do in specific contexts. If a person feels that that they will not be selfefficacious, they avoid the task and more importantly avoid entire domains such as engineering. According to Bandura’s theory 1 , self-efficacy has four sources. These are enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal or social persuasion, and physiological and affective reaction. These factors can support or hinder one’s self-efficacy depending on the nature of the task undertaken. A number of researchers have looked at self-efficacy as it relates to careers and have found that self-efficacy is strongly related to both the range of career options as well as career preferences 2,3 . For example, Hackett 4 and Hackett and Betz 5 have examined mathematical selfefficacy because of the importance of quantitative skills to science, technology, engineering and technology careers. Their research indicates that individuals avoid some careers because of perceived mathematical ability rather than actual mathematical ability. Interest in specific aspects of a career and self-efficacy go hand in hand. Individuals with an high self-efficacy in science have a strong interest in theoretical abstract activities and individuals with an interest in technical activities have high self-efficacy in a variety of engineering subfields 6,7 . When Lent, Brown & Larkin 8 compared self-efficacy to other theories of career choice such as Holland’s 9 theory of fit between interests and occupational environment and Janis and Mann’s 10 theory of decision making (considering consequences of alternatives) they found that self-efficacy was a better predictor. Neither the theory of fit nor the theory of decision making predicted academic achievement or career perseverance. Bandura 1 summarized the role of selfefficacy and career choice as follows. “...efficacy is a robust contributor to career development. It predicts the scope of career options seriously considered, occupational interests and preferences, enrollment in courses of study that provide the knowledge and skills for various careers, perseverance in difficult fields, academic success in chosen pursuits and even choice of cultural milieu in which to pursue one’s occupational career.” (p.427). In the context of this work, tinkering self-efficacy refers to one's experience, competence, and comfort with manual activities. It is the confidence and belief in one’s competence to engage in activities often associated with engineering such as manipulating, assembling, disassembling, constructing, modifying, breaking and repairing components and devices, (e.g. assembling a bicycle or taking apart a computer). Women's lack of experience in using tools and machinery and taking things apart and putting them together contributes to their low tinkering self-efficacy. Thus, tinkering experience favors men even when women have an interest in and an inclination towards technical fields. For example, Crismond 11 found that even academically well-prepared female students at a technical high school were fearful of simple mechanical devices (e.g. nutcrackers) and tentative in handling them when engaged in engineering design activities. In contrast, male students were confident and explored the devices to the fullest. In another study, Margolis and Fisher 12 found that female computer science majors at university did not, when playing with computers, take them apart and then reassemble them. In contrast to their male Page 13392.3 counterparts, tinkering was not something women chose to do in their free time while growing up and, as a consequence, they felt unprepared. In the context of this work, technical self-efficacy refers to confidence and belief in one’s competence to learn, regulate, master and apply technical academic subject matter related to success in engineering. Baumert, Evans, and Geiser 13 found that gender influenced technical self-efficacy, which in turn affected technical problem-solving. The women in their study had lower self-estimates of competence and technical problem solving scores than the men and attributed their failure to lack of ability rather than to lack of persistence. This is in sharp contrast to women’s perceptions of their problem-solving abilities and persistence in mathematics, a foundational skill for success in engineering. In the case of mathematics, women believed they were better and more persistent problem-solvers than males 14 . However, even women in engineering majors who intended to go on to graduate school or who were already in graduate school expressed less efficacy in their technical abilities than did their male counterparts 15, 16 . Even male engineering students who drop out of engineering have greater technical self-efficacy than the females who graduate as engineer 17 . research questions The research questions that guided this study were as follows. What do experts in the engineering education community consider important tinkering and technical skills necessary for success in engineering? What is the reliability of a self-efficacy instrument based on the tinkering and technical skills experts consider necessary for success in engineering? What is the factor structure of a self-efficacy instrument based on the tinkering and technical skills experts consider necessary for success in engineering? What is the self-efficacy of Freshman students in an engineering design course? method According to Bandura 1 general measures of self-efficacy have little or no relationship to an individual’s efficacy beliefs as they relate to specific behaviors or specific domains such as tinkering. He recommends that the development of a self-efficacy instrument must draw on expert knowledge about what a person must do to be successful. This procedure establishes the validity of the instrument. Consequently, the first step in creating this tinkering and technical self-efficacy instrument was to survey experts in the field of engineering. The experts consisted of a volunteer sample of engineering faculty, students, and practicing engineers, who are members of ASEE. There were a total of 101 respondents (71 members of ASEE, 24 engineering students in a design course at a large university loca