How do engineering attitudes vary by gender and motivation? Attractiveness of outreach science exhibitions in four countries

ABSTRACT

Outreach activities, like mobile science exhibitions, give opportunities to hands-on experiences in an attractive learning environment. We analysed attitudes, motivation and learning during a science exhibition visit, their relations to gender and future educational plans in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Belgium (N = 1210 sixth-graders). Pupils' performance in a knowledge test improved after the visit. Autonomous motivation and attitudes towards science predicted situation motivation awakened in the science exhibition. Interestingly, the scientist attitude and the societal attitude were clearly separate dimensions. The third dimension was manifested in the engineering attitude typical for boys, who were keener on working with appliances, designing computer games and animations. Scientist and societal attitudes correlated positively and engineering attitude correlated negatively with the future educational plans of choosing the academic track in secondary education. The societal perspective on science was connected to above average achievement. In the follow-up test, these attitudes showed to be quite stable.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education research
• attractiveness of education
• motivation for learning
• hands-on-experience
• future educational plans
• science exhibition
• gender differences

Notes on contributors

Hannu S. Salmi is professor of science centre pedagogy in the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education, also Director of Research in Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, where he has been working since 1984. Earlier 2003–2008 he was a professor of science communication in the University of Dalarna Sweden. He has been coordinator and partner in more than 20 European R&D projects like Hands-on & Brains-on and Science centre to go. He has also been a member of the advisory board of EU Commission DG Research in Science and Society programmes. Prof. Salmi also was a key expert while creating the new Science Education Strategy 2020 of Finland by Ministry of Education. His main research areas are informal learning, science centres, motivation and open learning environments.

Helena Thuneberg finalaised her PhD in 2008. The topic of this research was giving new information related to the relation of intrinsic motivation and relatively autonomity with the clear links to cognitive abilities and learning. She has been working for two decades in the Unit of Special education in the University of Helsinki both as a teacher trainee and a senior researcher in the large-scale studies related to PISA-research and Unit of Educational Evaluation.

Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen received her PhD in special education later in 2014 about the development of primary school pupils learning to learn skills and the factors influencing their performance in educational assessment studies. She is the project manager of the Centre for Educational Assessment at the University of Helsinki since 2007 and researcher since 2002. She coordinates all the large-scale municipal and nationally representative assessment studies conducted at the Centre, and she also participated in the national implementation of PISA 2006. In PISA 2015 she acts as the vice-NPM for Finland, having the responsibility of the core domain of collaborative problem solving. In 2007–2012 she coordinated the work of The Scientific Board of Psychology in Finland, preparing evidence-informed recommendations for developing practices.