Abstract:

The entrance of students to engineering programs implies an assessment of their mathematical abilities, but the success of their performance in the first year of their school career has been associated with attitudinal, aptitude and emotional issues. Higher education institutions normally have student support programs to guide them and monitor their performance in order to minimize conflict situations, and in order to improve their school retention rates. In this investigation, the relationship between attitudes and habits of new students in engineering was analyzed, with their results in the entrance exam on Mathematical Thought. The results of 1581 students who requested their access to 10 engineering programs in a technological institute of Mexico in 2016 were studied. 66 questions were also analyzed that contained the entrance questionnaire, which were associated with their attitudes, habits and perceptions about the study. Statistical hypothesis tests and a correlation analysis between these responses and the results in the Mathematical Thought test were performed. The findings show that the best results in Mathematical Thought test are those who think that their personal effort and decisions are the basis for achieving goals; they are those with an active participation in classes, who study outside of school and turn in their homework on time. But, above all, they are those who work in teams so that they collaborate in their integration, in the planning and definition of the strategies to reach the goal and, of course, of those who fulfill the entrusted work. It is not enough to study individually and have good attitudes, it is necessary to study collaboratively. Institutional support programs for students, such as tutoring, and teachers specifically should promote these learning mechanisms. If students do not have enough skills to do their homework in this way, the tutoring program supports should focus on it.

Keywords:

Engineering student attitudes, mathematical thought, technological education.