Understanding women's choices to enroll in engineering: a case study.

Permanent URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20128425
Title:
Understanding women's choices to enroll in engineering : a case study
Creator:
Young, Eileen (Author)
Contributor:
Dougherty, Margaret (Advisor)
Conn, Kelly (Advisor)
Publisher:
Boston, Massachusetts : Northeastern University, 2014
Date Accepted:
May 2014
Date Awarded:
August 2014
Type of resource:
Text
Genre:
Doctoral theses
Format:
electronic
Digital origin:
born digital
Abstract/Description:
The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) college programs is a troublesome local, national and global phenomenon. The topic of this doctoral thesis specifically focused on the underrepresentation of women in the field of engineering and more specifically on the factors that women may perceive as chiefly motivating them to choose engineering as a college major. By not choosing to major in engineering, women forego intellectual opportunities and the financial rewards that engineering careers can provide. Their absence means that the field of engineering also suffers from the lack of contributions from a diverse workforce. Women who graduated from a specific community college's engineering program in the United States were the focus of this qualitative study. Grounded in achievement motivation theory, and in particular expectancy-value theory of academic and career choice, this research was guided by two questions: How do women perceive their academic self-efficacies and expectations for success as influencing their decisions to enroll in engineering? How do women perceive their subjective task values as influencing their decisions to enroll in engineering? This single, holistic case study with one main unit of analysis incorporated a written questionnaire, individual interviews and a focus group meeting as the three instruments used to collect data. The qualitative data, cyclically coded, shed light on the complex mechanisms of academic and career choice.
Subjects and keywords:
career choice
community colleges
gender
STEM
women
education
gender and sexuality
Women in engineering
Women engineering students
Women engineers -- Education (Higher)
Engineering -- Vocational guidance
Engineering -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Motivation in education
Self-efficacy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17760/d20128425
Permanent URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20128425
Use and reproduction:
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