2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Achievement goal orientation is a well-established concept influencing student behavior. It defines the primary reason for students’ engagement in academic activities like problem-solving in engineering. This study explores how different genders approach learning and achievement through mastery or performance-oriented goal orientation while solving problems in engineering. Engineering students face distinct academic challenges that can significantly influence their goal orientation. Students with mastery goal orientation tend to have a more comprehensive understanding of the learning material, promoting creativity and problem-solving skills. Students with a performance approach usually employ shallow strategies in problem-solving and desire to surpass their peers in performance and gain positive judgments. Individual characteristics of gender have acquired a particular interest in this research to investigate how different mastery and performance goal orientation profiles vary among men, women, and non-binary individuals in engineering education.
Although the interaction between achievement goal orientation and gender has been studied across different disciplines, findings are still inconclusive in the engineering problem-solving context. This study explored gender differences by addressing the research question: How do engineering students differ in their goal orientations based on gender in problem-based learning? By investigating gender-specific tendencies, this research aims to provide insights into how students’ motivations shape their academic behavior and engagement. The research is part of a larger mixed-methods study on how cognitive and motivational factors impact engineering students’ cognitive engagement during problem-solving. Data is collected using a validated survey of achievement goal orientation-revised (AGQ-R) administered to second-year undergraduate engineering students at a land-grant public university in the western United States. The survey captured students’ preferences across the goal orientation dimensions and examined whether there were significant gender differences.
Achievement Goal orientation has been widely studied in various fields, but there remains a gap in understanding how gender differences manifest in STEM generally and particularly in engineering education, a traditionally male-dominated discipline. By comparing goal orientations across genders, this study provides the foundation for research on specific motivational profiles during problem-solving activity in engineering education. The findings of this study revealed that there is no significant difference in overall achievement goal orientation based on gender among undergraduate engineering students. This research contributes to the development of gender-sensitive pedagogical strategies, enabling educators to foster more inclusive learning environments that cater to the diverse motivational needs of students in STEM fields.
Keywords: achievement goal orientation, gender, engineering, mastery goal orientation, performance goal orientation.