Session Information
24 SES 01, STEM
Paper Session
Contribution
The acronym STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) was formulated by the American National Science Foundation to demarcate the general trend of diminished interest of students for careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and related fields, and to encourage these careers among students. In Croatian scientific nomenclature and research tradition, the acronym STEM would indicate the fields of natural and technical sciences as well as some of their interdisciplinary aspects. The STEM problem is a relatively new and socially very relevant research area in Europe, especially in the Republic of Croatia. The issue of young people’s STEM related educational achievement and career aspirations is important because it provokes further research, educational, social and technology related issues and implications. The interest of European youth for these vocations is declining since 1990s. Researchers, national governments and authorities like EU operate with exact figures which clearly demonstrate a shortage of STEM graduates and a decline in the number of STEM experts.
This paper aims to further explain some theoretically driven research question. We intend to consider the level of Croatian primary school students’ self-competence beliefs related to STEM school subjects, where beliefs related to mathematics performance are especially important. Self-competence beliefs represent “children's cognitive representations of how good they are at a given activity” (Freiberger, Steinmayr, & Spinath, 2012, p. 518). They encompass information important for one’s identity and information important for one’s performance. Information about one’s efficacy, or academic self-efficacy beliefs (ASE) represent individuals' convictions that they can successfully perform given academic tasks at designated levels (Bandura, 1997; Schunk, 1991). They refer to students' perceptions of their ability to master given tasks or develop specific competences (Bong, 2001) or judgments that reflect task-specific performance expectations (Zimmerman, 2000). On the other hand, self-evaluations of specific abilities or qualities are sometimes termed as domain-specific self-concepts, or more broadly as an academic self-concept (ASC) (Marsh 1990, Marsh, Byrne, & Shavelson, 1988; Marsh and O' Mara, 2008; Schavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976). These constructs have sometimes been used interchangeably despite their conceptual and operational differences (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003).
Both facets of self-competence beliefs are important in relation to general academic, mathematical, and verbal domains of school achievement (e.g., Van Dinther, Dochy, & Segers, 2011). The development of the relation between school performance and self-competence beliefs in the STEM field is still not clear, both regarding its structure and causal relations. Several general models developed in the field of school achievement can serve as a starting point in delineating these relations in the STEM field (Byrne, 1984; Calsyn & Kenny, 1977; Skaalvik & Hagtvet, 1990; Valentine & DeBois, 2005): the skill-development model assumes that achievement affects self-competence beliefs; the self-enhancing model assumes that self-competence beliefs affect achievement; the reciprocal effects model suggests that achievement and self-competence beliefs affect each other; and some models assume that external variables affect both achievement and self-competence beliefs.
The main objectives of the present paper are to examine the level of self-competence beliefs in STEM school subjects and to explore the relationship between self-competence beliefs and school achievement in STEM school subjects, especially achievement in mathematics. We expected that differences exist in the structure of this relation in groups of students with differing levels of interest for the STEM school subjects.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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