First-Year Engineering Students' Mathematics Task Performance and Its Relation to Their Motivational Values and Views about Mathematics

Autor/inn/en	Tossavainen, Timo; Rensaa, Ragnhild Johanne; Haukkanen, Pentti; Mattila, Mika; Johansson, Monica
Titel	First-Year Engineering Students' Mathematics Task Performance and Its Relation to Their Motivational Values and Views about Mathematics
Quelle	In: European Journal of Engineering Education, 46 (2021) 4, S.604-617 (14 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Tossavainen, Timo) ORCID (Rensaa, Ragnhild Johanne) ORCID (Haukkanen, Pentti) ORCID (Mattila, Mika)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0304-3797
DOI	10.1080/03043797.2020.1849032
Schlagwörter	College Freshmen; Student Attitudes; Student Motivation; Value Judgment; Engineering Education; Mathematics Achievement; Self Efficacy; Performance Factors; Gender Differences; Correlation; Foreign Countries; Finland; Norway; Sweden + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Studienanfänger; Schülerverhalten; Schulische Motivation; Werturteil; Ingenieurausbildung; Mathmatics sikills; Mathmatics achievement; Mathematical ability; Mathematische Kompetenz; Self-efficacy; Selbstwirksamkeit; Leistungsindikator; Geschlechterkonflikt; Korrelation; Ausland; Finnland; Norwegen; Schweden
Abstract	This study investigates Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish first-year engineering students' task performance in mathematics and examines how it relates to their motivational values and beliefs about the nature of mathematics. In a set of seven mathematical tasks, female students outperformed male students, for example, in the simplification of symbolic expressions. Our findings also show that female students set more demanding learning goals for themselves. Further, they expressed higher intrinsic motivational values, whereas male students emphasised utility values, which correlated negatively with task performance. Problem-solving and discovering structures and regularities dominate engineering students' views of mathematics. The 'toolbox' view of mathematics is the best predictor of task performance; the stronger this view is, the poorer is the task performance. However, neither motivational values nor views about mathematics are especially strong predictors of task performance. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that, in engineering mathematics courses, greater emphasis is placed on learning fundamental reasoning strategies and discussing the theoretical foundations of the main results. This seems to lead to a better result even in applying mathematics than if one focuses only on learning how to use ready-made mathematical tools in concrete examples. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01