Relationship between self-efficacy and makerspaces?

calendar_today 2 November 2019

Interested in whether makerspaces can affect levels of self-efficacy, particularly for disadvantaged youth (See: How poverty affects people’s decision-making processes). Summarised this paper by Vongkulluksn et al (2018) for future reference.

Summary

  • Show students role models who failed 100 times
  • Provide emotional scaffolding in the beginning phase and help students choose projects

Context

  • Self-efficacy: One’s perceived ability to learn new skills and succeed in a task one sets oneself (Bandura, 2001)
  • Informed by four sources: 1) Mastery experience 2) Vicarious experience 3) Verbal persuasion 4) Physiological/emotional reaction
  • Triadic reciprocality is a model used in social cognitive theory which explains that environmental, personal and behaviours determinants influence a person’s behaviour Design-based instruction/ design-thinking/ learning by design: Increase reasoning skill and transfer by applying knowledge to design an artefact which addresses real-world problems
Design Thinking Process Diagram
Design thinking process, visualised by Stanford’s d-school

Work by Vongkulluksn et al. (2018) studied how participation in design-based makerspaces influenced situational interest, self-efficacy and achievement emotions. Difference between activity-related and outcome-related emotions – i.e. how kids felt during the workshop or afterwards: The paper states that self-efficacy is context/domain-specific and strongly relates to activity-related emotions (whereas out-related emotions link to academic self-concept).
  • They found iterative design processes and context-specific issues (i.e. choosing too complex of a subject) can lead to ‘suboptimal outcomes’ in self-efficacy and interest
  • The paper concludes context-sensitive self-efficacy and emotion-related scaffolds can foster positive makerspace experiences. Application: Use verbal persuasion or small successive goals to maintain self-efficacy levels.
  • Failure/setback is an integral part of the design process. Application: Show role models who ‘failed’ 100 times building something
  • Design-based instruction is effective in increasing student interest in STEM (Doppelt and Schunn (2008); Ke (2014). Positive STEM interest contributes to decisions to pursue STEM careers = influence educational trajectory. A decline in self-efficacy ‘may be detrimental to the development of STEM identity’. A student may then believe they lack skills necessary to ‘be apart of the STEM community’ Vongkulluksn et al. (2018).

Interest development by Hidi and Renninger (2006)

  1. Triggered situational: triggered by relevance, humour and novelty (Sadoski, 2001) – necessary for more lasting individualised interest Renninger et al 2008
  2. Maintained situational: focus, attention and persistence – the more relevant/meaningful the task the more likely interested Renninger and Su 2012
  3. Similarities in findings from a previous post discussing research which encourages children to become agentic makers (make solutions problems they already care about)
  4. Emerging individual
  5. Well-developed individual interest

Findings:

  • High levels of self-efficacy can be attributed to increased student autonomy and ownership towards learning
  • Project complexity factors into older students poor evaluation of their progress and decreased perception of self-efficacy. Supports findings that students overestimate their abilities often
  • The decline in self-efficacy between beginning and midpoint reflect challenges with overambitious goals for their projects.Application: students need to support student self-efficacy in the beginning phase / effective when coupled with teacher scaffolding in the initial decision-making process – helping students choose projects at the right level
  • Relationship between excitement and maintaining interest – Hidi and Renninger (2006) – sounds obvious
  • The emphasis of scaffolding = confusion can promote deep inquiry but only when students are able to deal with this negative emotion and have scaffolds to help resolve their confusion

Best practice of a makerspace according to Wilczynski (2015)

  1. Training is essential
  2. A clearly defined mission
  3. Promoting collaboration
  4. Access to makerspace works with not against student work schedule
  5. Staff support

Application:

There are plenty of ways the findings can be applied to future STEM workshops.
  • Beginning: Support students with the decision-making process of choosing what to build/work on
  • Show students examples of role models who ‘failed’ 100 times building something
  • Mid-process: Utilise small successive goals to maintain self-efficacy levels.