Implicit theories of intelligence in STEM education: perspectives through the lens of technology education students

Abstract

The educational significance of eliciting students' implicit theories of intelligence is well established with the majority of this work focussing on theories regarding entity and incremental beliefs. However, a second paradigm exists in the prototypical nature of intelligence for which to view implicit theories. This study purports to instigate an investigation into students' beliefs concerning intellectual behaviours through the lens of prototypical definitions within STEM education. To achieve this, the methodology designed by Sternberg et al. (J Pers Soc Psychol 41(1):37-55, 1981) was adopted with surveys being administered to students of technology education requiring participants to describe characteristics of intelligent behaviour. A factor analytic approach including exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling was taken in analysing the data to determine the underlying constructs which the participants viewed as critical in their definition of intelligence. The findings of this study illustrate that students of technology education perceive intelligence to be multifaceted, comprising of three factors including social, general and technological competences. Implications for educational practice are discussed relative to these findings. While initially this study focuses on the domain of technology education, a mandate for further work in other disciplines is discussed.

Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence

“…Not only do people tend to think of intelligence as multidimensional, there is also evidence that people differ in what they identify as important elements of intelligence and that these conceptualizations are influenced by background and experience (Fry, 1984;Berg and Sternberg, 1985;Sternberg, 2000;Buckley et al, 2019). For example, teachers' conceptualizations of intelligence are related to the age of students they teach; teachers of younger students emphasize social skills as a critical part of intelligence and teachers of older students emphasize cognitive skills (Fry, 1984).…”

Exploring the Prototypical Definitions of Intelligent Engineers Held by Irish and Swedish Higher Education Engineering Students

“…The factors relating to consciousness and drive are also of particular relevance even though there were not rated significantly differently by Irish and Swedish females. The consciousness factor could be interpreted as general and it aligns with the social competence factors found by Buckley et al (2019) and Sternberg et al (1981). Based on this, while perceived by the participants to be relevant to intelligence in engineering, it is likely to be relevant to peoples' conceptions of intelligence in general.…”

Critical Analysis of International STEM Education Policy Themes

“…Based on this result, teachers must be competent with STEM content and need continued upgrade to their pedagogical content knowledge to provide the best integrated STEM environment possible for students (Chittum, et al, 2017). Finally, teachers must have the willingness to teach STEM content (Buckley, et al, 2019).STEM content is an important implementation factor for integrated STEM. While it was not mentioned specifically by all the documents, its importance seemed to be assumed by the documents when it is mentioned science, technology, engineering, and math in their contents.…”

“…The integrated STEM takes a commitment to the district to provide time for planning and there has to be time dedicated to allowing the teachers to find the meaningful connections among the content prior to instructing that content or providing activities and lessons that connect the content together. There has to be more instructional planning time than a traditional classroom setting (Buckley, et al, 2019).The global theme of time is prevalent throughout the documents, not just time for teaching and learning, but time for planning, collaboration and professional development to emphasise importance of time for the process of policy development and integrated STEM education.…”