For several decades STEM education researchers have worked to identify and develop measures of social psychological constructs that can help us better understand what motivates student learning and persistence. In this time, measures of constructs such as identity, values, self-efficacy, and expectancy have been used effectively to assess educational interventions and explain many facets of student experiences in STEM programs. Increasingly within the literature researchers are working toward combining multiple constructs into predictive models of student outcomes. This study reports on an information-based multi-model comparative research design used to develop and assess a model of the way in which engineering identity, self-efficacy, and values may combine to motivate student learning within an undergraduate engineering program at a large Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Survey data from two cohorts of Freshman students is used to develop and validate the measures of each construct and conduct a multi-model comparison using Structural Equation Modeling
My research is focused on developing interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and methodological designs capable of modeling the social and psychological drivers of behavior, decision-making, and information processing across multiple domains (e.g., STEM
education, food security, the environment).
Stephen B Knisley completed the BE degree in biomedical engineering at Duke University and the PhD degree in biomedical engineering and mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently the chair of the Department of Chemical, Biological and Bioengineering at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
An associate professor in the Department of Chemical, Biological, and Bioengineering, he has his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina A&T and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa. His research involves musculoskeletal biomechanics with a focus on computational methods. He is also deeply interested in engineering education and especially creating opportunities for underrepresented minorities and women in the field.
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