Relationship between students’ hands-on making self-efficacy, perceived value, cooperative attitude and competition preparedness in joining an iSTEAM contest

Background: Hands-on activities and makerspaces have rapidly gained popularity in recent years. One of the reasons for this is that they have the potential to stimulate interest and identity development in STEM or STEAM. Taiwan has organized many technology and science competitions for students to raise their interest and creativity in the past years. Purpose: The iSTEAM contest in Taiwan plan to assist public schools in rural areas to develop students’ capability in making activities. To motivate rural students to experience an integrated science, technology, engineering, art, and math (iSTEAM) contest, this study invited rural school students to prepare for and join a competition focusing on making miniature models. The related variables relevant to motivation orientation, such as participants’ hands-on making self-efficacy, perceived value, cooperative attitude, and competition preparedness in the iSTEAM contest were explored. Expectedly, with an understanding of the correlates between those variables, the results of this study can be applied to successfully implement other STEAM contests. Sample: A total of 187 students who participated in the competition filled in the questionnaire for the survey participants. After invalid questionnaires were excluded, 167 valid questionnaires were obtained. Design and Methods: This study adopts the purposive sampling method, based on the value-attitude-behavior model, the quantitative research method was adopted. Results: The results showed that students who participated in the competition had high self-efficacy for making miniature models, appreciated the value that the competition brought them, and had a positive attitude about cooperating with team members as well as preparing for the competition. Conclusion: There is a close and positive correlation between the four constructs of self-efficacy, perceived value, cooperative attitude, and competition preparedness.