F8-SP1-2 - Self efficacy and causal attributions related to academic performance and life at university at engineering undergraduation
3. Research Work In ProgressJosé Aquiles Baesso Grimoni1, Fraulein Vidigal de Paula1
1 University of São Paulo
Introduction
Keywords: causality attribution, engineering education, self-efficacy, university performance
This is a work in progress abstract
Brazilian engineering education is known for its extensive theoretical curriculum, overload in classroom schedule, high difficulties in learning and constant failure, which can cause longer periods for students to conclude their studies or event termination. Causes for termination are vast and might include difficulties with teachers’ methodologies, social economic condition, educational level of family, leaving parents' house, financial difficulties, among others, although correlations are low with such causes (BRAGA, PEIXOTO, BOGUTCHI, 2003). Rodriguez (2012) says that only 46 out of 100 students at universities conclude their studies, and evasion occurs mainly in the first months of undergraduation. Similar outcome was found by Braga, Peixoto and Bogutchi (2003).
On the other hand, several students do overcome these difficulties by holding on and conclude undergraduation. Ganda and Boruchovitch (2010, apud Ganda and Boruchovitch, 2011), relates that causal attributions and emotions associated to academic success and failure in 27 students shows that most of them associate their good performance to effort, while bad performance are associated to lack of motivation. Neves (2002) stated that students are more likely to get better results when teachers have success expectations on them.
The current research aims to jointly study the relations among academic performance (course evolution and performance in class), life at university (every experience beyond regular required schedule to conclude undergraduation, including recreation activities, sports, study groups, science initiation, etc), social demographic data (color or race, sexual orientation, gender identity, public or private high school, etc) self-efficacy, using the translated version to portuguese of Sherer self-efficacy scale (RIBEIRO, 1995) and Scale of evaluation of causal attribution of success and failure of undergraduation students (BORUCHOVITCH, SANTOS, 2018). Data will be collected in two classes of an intermediary stage of engineering undergraduation of a public university located at São Paulo, Brazil and full research is expected to be concluded latest March, 2020. Characteristics of participants will be analyzed by descriptive statistics, and research goals will be achieved by using a ordinary least square linear regression (OLS) with the objective to find significant statistical results among the parameters analyzed in this research. Once models are concluded, results will be compared to the outcomes of other similar researches. It is expected that the outcome of this research can be used in an action plan to improve the academic performance among undergraduation students and also to increase their level of satisfaction along the academic journey.