Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 483 de 957
Interestingly, when reviewing the percentage of responses per subcategory, there were
only small differences between the male and female students, as well as small differences
between the Affinity and Non-Affinity students.
Discussion
Several important points emerged from the context map assessment. The first is that in
three out of four grades, the average Personal responses were greater than the average
Semantic responses. This reflects the notion that students, after the engineering
intervention, were making their own meaning and drawing their own conclusions about
engineering rather than just reproducing the information formally presented during class.
Few students provided Emotions/Values/Aesthetics responses. There are many possible
explanations for this occurrence, however, one reason could be that students felt the
assignment lent itself primarily to recording factual information, not opinions and feelings
about engineering.
Another interesting point was that there were not large differences in the secondary code
responses between male and female students. This is an important phenomenon because
often, in the case of engineering, female students achieve less than male students (Ohland,
Brawner, Camacho, Layton, Long, Lord, & Wasburn, 2011; Cano, Kimmel, Koppel, &
Muldrow, 2001; Crawford, Wood, Fowler, & Norrell, 1994). In this case, the two groups
scored very similarly. This could mean that a context map assessment is a less genderbiased
assessment than other engineering assessments currently being used. The fact that
there were not large differences between the Affinity and Non-Affinity students is also
interesting to note. Further research could help to understand and to explain why these
two groups performed so similarly.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Future research plans include further developing the secondary coding system to gain a
deeper and richer understanding of what students found meaningful and what knowledge
they portrayed in their context maps. A more refined coding system that allows for
differentiation between Associating and Inferring codes is needed.
Additionally, further research into the gender differences, and additionally research into
the Affinity and Non-Affinity differences will be necessary to better understand how these
two groups conceptualize engineering. Future research will utilize power analysis and
statistical tests to determine if meaningful and significant differences actually exist
between the groups of students. Finally, interviewing students about their context maps
could provide validity evidence for the coding system.
Finally, research into student interest in engineering is called for. Since the intention of
early engineering interventions is to help dispel misconceptions about the engineering
profession and to raise interest and literacy in engineering, an assessment aimed at
gathering this information would be beneficial. The context map study is part of a larger
study, and in time, additional data will be analysed to help provide a more complete
understanding of student conceptions about engineering.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011