Assessing students’ motivation to engage in sustainable engineering

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to design an assessment instrument to evaluate students’ attitudes toward sustainable engineering (SE). Factors that impact SE beliefs could then be explored. Design/methodology/approach – Using the definition of sustainability from the Brundtland report and expectancy value theory, students’ sentiment toward SE was evaluated using items to assess SE self-efficacy, SE value and SE affect. The survey was distributed at three diverse universities with 515 responses from students ranging from first year through graduate studies in a variety of engineering majors. The survey instrument was validated using principal components analysis, and internal reliability was established via high Cronbach’s alpha for each construct. Findings – Participation in more experiential, enriching learning experiences correlated to higher SE self-efficacy, value and affect. Extracurricular club involvement correlated with a lower self-efficacy but high SE value. Students who had participated in undergraduate research had a high SE self-efficacy, particularly in the environmental and social sub-scales. The students who participated in internships had high SE self-efficacy but lower SE affect. A greater number of volunteer hours correlated with increased SE affect. Female students possessed higher SE value and affect than male students, but self-efficacy was not significantly different. SE self-efficacy increased with academic rank. Originality/value – This is the first effort to measure engineering students’ attitudes toward SE using the three sub-scales of expectancy value theory and assessing correlations in these attributes with students’ participation in various learning experiences.

Enhancing Education for Sustainable Development in Environmental University Programmes: A Co-Creation Approach

“…On the other hand, students' participation in learning experiences "such as voluntary, service-learning or classroom-based" increase their sustainable self-efficacy, value and affect [38] (p. 150). In this context, self-efficacy refers to students' beliefs towards their own abilities; value is related to task importance and is associated to students' reaction.…”

Efficacy of Macroethics Education in Engineering

“…[25][26][43][44]48,51 Two other instruments that are similar to the DIT but use scenarios more specific to engineering are the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT) 14 and the Engineering Ethical Reasoning Instrument (EERI). 53 Different instruments have been used to assess macroethical issues, including a sustainability value instrument 36 and the Commitment to Social Justice instrument. 25,39 In summary, there is substantial literature on where and how ethics is taught to engineering students.…”

Impacts of Sustainability Education on the Attitudes of Engineering Students

“…However, the affect dimension related to actual choices and behaviors around sustainability and showed a better ability to discriminate between individuals, with among the highest dispersion values among the survey elements. Although the negatively-worded items were intended to map to value (as the statements related to extrinsic value), previous research found that the items did not cluster with the other value items 27 ; this could be revisited with future groups of students to determine whether in other survey environments both the positively and negatively worded value items could be clustered together.…”

“…The sustainability items were extracted from a larger survey instrument, which used a 6-point Likert scale (0 to 5) for the sustainability value, affect, and negative items; the order of the items was also modified. 27 The concern for others items were also extracted from a larger survey instrument, and the order of the items was also changed. 13 Also, care should be taken to interpret any changes, positive or negative, as solely due to a single course -or even an "environment" such as a living-learning community.…”

“…Assessment of affective outcomes poses challenges. In recent work, McCormick et al 27 developed a survey instrument based on Expectancy Value Theory (EVT) 17 to measure students' attitudes toward sustainable engineering. This instrument formed the foundation for this study.…”