Abstract:

There is an alarming decline in young people’s interest in STEM related studies and careers (BE, 2017). Students’ low interest in STEM careers may be related to their low awareness of a range of career opportunities, and lack of familiarity with the diverse expectations of STEM careers (e.g. Vaino et al., 2015). Female students especially, seem to suffer more than males from stereotypes that are related to external (parents, teachers, peers, society) expectations (OECD, 2008). Also, it is hypothesized (Liou, 2015) that students’ poor conceptions of technology - what technology is, how it functions and how it is related to the other fields such as society and science - may contribute to their lack of interest towards pursuing technology and engineering (T&E) careers. At the same time, upper secondary students’ T&E related career orientations, particularly and separately from the other STEM careers, have received little attention in the literature. In the current study, emphasis is given to upper secondary students’ (N= 375) T&E related career orientations and to the aspects that may be able to explain their orientations. The Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) (Lent et al., 2005), with central characteristics such as an individual’s self-efficacy, outcome expectations, personal interests and contextual supports/barriers was used to explain reasons behind students’ career orientations. The model was supplemented by the other theoretical construct - students’ conceptions of technology, which hypothetically, should further raise the explanatory power of the model.
RQ: What are the critical aspects that determine male and female students’ T&E – related career orientations?
Based on the following research instruments:
-Questionnaire on students’ conceptions of technology (Vaino et al., 2020);
-Questionnaire based on SCCT on students’ career orientations (Vaino et al., 2015), a new integrated questionnaire was developed and face validated by the group of science and technology education experts.
Principal component, internal consistency and a general linear model analysis were conducted on the gathered data to discover the main predictors amongst generated components on students’ T&E-related career orientations. Separate models were built for both, male and female students. The standardized beta values of predictors for two models were calculated. All statistically significant predictors that were remained to the final models accounted for 84% variance for male students’ and 50% for female students’ T&E related career orientations. It was found that the strongest predictor for females was positive parental expectations which, at the same time, did not have a significant predictive power for males. Students’ T&E related self-efficacy was found to be an important predictor for both. Greater agreement with „Technological fix“ (e.g. The problems caused by technology can be solved by the development of new technology) and instrumentalist conceptions (e.g. Technology enriches our life) predicted positively male students’ T&E related career orientations. The greater agreement with idealist conceptions of technology (Technology is only an application of science) predicted negatively female students’ respective orientations. The findings will be further discussed in the final paper. As a long term impact, the project is expected to improve the recruitment of young people and especially the proportion of women in T&E studies and careers.

Keywords:

Technology and engineering related career orientations, Social Cognitive Career Theory, Students' conceptions of technology.