Resumen de Vocational high school students’ engineering epistemological beliefs
Nuri Balta, Sevda Yerdelen Damar, Adam R. Carberry
This study investigates the engineering epistemological beliefs (EEB) of Turkish vocational high school students. The goalof this research is to reveal changes in these beliefs across grade levels, discipline, and gender. The present study included314 vocational high school students from five schools in two Turkish cities. A Turkish version of the epistemological beliefassessment for engineering (EBAE) questionnaire was created and used to assess student EEBs. Descriptive resultsindicated that as grade increased, average scores of students’ EEB decreased with respect to almost all dimensions of theEBAE. Males reported more sophisticated beliefs than females for all EEB dimensions except for justification forengineering knowing. Participants studying the metal technology discipline reported the most naı ̈ve EEB, while thosestudying information technologies displayed the most sophisticated beliefs. The results of inferential statistics showed thatwhile the effect of gender, discipline and grade level were not significant with students’ EEB, the effect of interaction ofgrade level and discipline on students’ EEB was statistically significant. This study implies that the vocational schoolcurricula in Turkey should be reconsidered in terms of student engineering epistemological growth.
