2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In engineering as a profession and in engineering education, failure is commonplace--attempted designs fail, experiments fail about 90% of the time, and students do not achieve the scores they desire on homework, quizzes, and exams. Thus, the ability to navigate and respond to failure as an opportunity for growth and learning is a key component of the scientific enterprise. However, engineering education research is sparse on how students respond to failure.

Research on response to failure has been extensive in workplace settings, in which there is a very wide range of negative and positive responses to failure, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, working harder, working smarter, shock, fear, renewed dedication, increased susceptibility to stereotypes, blame, shame, despair, changes in interest, reassessing career, reassessing self-perceived ability, and learning from failure. Thus, these responses may include combinations of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Research on responses to success likewise suggests positive emotions in response to success on work projects, such as pride, satisfaction, and happiness. Educational research on response to failure across different domains and ages--not just in engineering education--has been quite narrow because research has used theories that make very narrow predictions about response to failure, like self-belief theory[1], achievement goal orientation[2], expectancy-value theory[3], interest theory[4], etc. Educational research on response to success has been sparse, but also suggests positive emotions in response to success.

Our long-term goal is to find ways to help build resilience to failure and ways in which we can help students learn from failure (e.g., viewing failure as an opportunity), and hence it is critical to understand the range of responses to failure. Furthermore, to understand what response to failure looks like, we need to contrast it with response to success. Additionally, it is important to consider not only the standards of the course or the specific task (i.e., what counts as a failing score) but also the standards of the students. For instance, the same grade may be interpreted differently by two different students, one may see it as a success and the other may see it as a failure. Thus, it is critical to interview students to develop a better understanding of their response to their standard of failure or success.

For this work-in-progress, we interviewed 26 students in a second year ECE course in a large public university, which is required for EE or CE majors, so we expect that students will see the course as important, and simultaneously put a great deal of grade pressure on themselves, making this an excellent test bed for measuring responses to failure and success in Engineering. Interviews focused on a) perceived success vs. perceived failure on the first exam, b) emotional responses to the first exam grade received, c) perceived reasons for that success or failure on the first exam, d) any additional study strategies used to study for the first exam, and e) plans--if any--to change study strategies for the second exam. We have completed the first-exam interviews and a motivation questionnaire, and applied a draft coding scheme derived from the interview statements to about one-half of the transcripts. Results so far are consistent with broader findings regarding emotions in formal learning--those who did better than expected verbalized a wide range of (almost all) positive emotions and those who did worse than expected verbalized a wide range of (almost all) negative emotions.

Follow-up interviews after the second exam of the semester have begun, and will be transcribed, coded, and analyzed using the same coding scheme with codes added as warranted by additional student statements in the interviews. A Likert-type questionnaire will be written based on the coded interview responses. In addition, interview responses will be analyzed based on scores on various motivation scales (e.g., students valuing the content more may have more-negative responses to perceived failure versus those who value the content less).

References

[1] Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press.

[2] Elliot, A. J., & McGregor, H. A. (2001). A 2× 2 achievement goal framework. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 501-519.

[3] Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 68-81.

[4] Hidi, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111-127.