“Yours Needs To Be More Like Mine!” What Does Competition Look Like in Informal Engineering Design Activities?

Graphical Abstract

Abstract

Explore competitive learning environments, children’s competitive behaviors, and the influence of these behaviors on engaging children and families in engineering learning.

Keywords:

• Informal Education
• Engineering
• Inclusion
• Science and Engineering Practices
• STEM

Conclusion

The purpose of this study is to explore the role that goal orientation can play in better understanding and conceptualizing children’s and their families’ engagement with engineering design activities in informal learning environments. Our aim is to depict the diverse ways in which children engage with engineering design processes and practices and to highlight potential factors that may influence their experiences. The results indicate the complexity of children’s goal orientations and potential contextual factors that may influence their goal orientations and yield new insights for future researchers and educators to better support children and their families to engage with engineering in informal learning environments.

Notes

1. Some motivation researchers also conceptualized a mastery-avoidance goal orientation, suggesting a two-by-two matrix of goal orientations, namely performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery-approach, and mastery-avoidance. However, studies also indicated that the mastery-avoidance goal orientation may not be conceptually valid or empirically supported, especially for young children (for more information, please see comprehensive reviews by Kaplan and Maehr 2007, and Vandewalle et al. 2019). In addition, our prior study (Liu and Bennett 2022) also showed that young children may not separate performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal orientations, and instead, had a general concept of performance goal orientation. In this study, we categorized children’s goal orientations into two simplified categories: performance and mastery goal orientation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

ChangChia Liu

ChangChia Liu is a Senior Research Associate at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing, New York.

Dorothy Bennett

Dorothy Bennett is the Director of Creative Pedagogy, at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing, New York.