TY - JOUR
T1 - Relationship Among Students’ Problem-Solving Attitude, Perceived Value, Behavioral Attitude, and Intention to Participate in a Science and Technology Contest
AU - Huang, Neng Tang Norman
AU - Chiu, Li Jia
AU - Hong, Jon Chao
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is partially supported by the “Aim for the Top University Project” sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC, under Grant no. MOST 104-2911-I-003-301 and NSC 102-2511-S-003-030-MY2. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Dr. Todd Milford, University of Victoria, and mentors Professor Larry D. Yore and Shari Yore for their assistance in preparing the report of this research study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - The strong humanistic and ethics-oriented philosophy of Confucianism tends to lead people influenced by these principles to undervalue the importance of hands-on practice and creativity in education. GreenMech, a science and technology contest, was implemented to encourage real-world, hands-on problem solving in an attempt to mitigate this effect. The self-reported attitudes, values, and intentions of 684 GreenMech participants from elementary, junior high, and senior high schools in Taiwan were subjected to confirmatory analysis with structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized model. The research findings revealed that the students’ problem-solving attitude is positively correlated to their perception of their own knowledge enrichment and thinking-skill enhancement as a result of participating in GreenMech. The findings also suggest that these perceived advantages positively influenced the intention to participate in future contests. This indicates that a highly competitive contest can be used to promote awareness of opportunities, which may enhance thinking skills and enrich knowledge.
AB - The strong humanistic and ethics-oriented philosophy of Confucianism tends to lead people influenced by these principles to undervalue the importance of hands-on practice and creativity in education. GreenMech, a science and technology contest, was implemented to encourage real-world, hands-on problem solving in an attempt to mitigate this effect. The self-reported attitudes, values, and intentions of 684 GreenMech participants from elementary, junior high, and senior high schools in Taiwan were subjected to confirmatory analysis with structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized model. The research findings revealed that the students’ problem-solving attitude is positively correlated to their perception of their own knowledge enrichment and thinking-skill enhancement as a result of participating in GreenMech. The findings also suggest that these perceived advantages positively influenced the intention to participate in future contests. This indicates that a highly competitive contest can be used to promote awareness of opportunities, which may enhance thinking skills and enrich knowledge.
KW - Behavioral attitude and intention
KW - Enhancing thinking skills
KW - Expectancy-value theory
KW - Knowledge enrichment
KW - Problem-solving attitude
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U2 - 10.1007/s10763-015-9665-y
DO - 10.1007/s10763-015-9665-y
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84939817786
SN - 1571-0068
VL - 14
SP - 1419
EP - 1435
JO - International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education
JF - International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education
IS - 8
ER -