Understanding the motivational drivers of childrens' career decision choices
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(Published version)
Date
2011
Authors
Myers, Michael
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thesis
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Abstract
Over the past 30 years both Governments and industry have attempted to put in place numerous programs and career intervention activities focused on making the career decision process easier for students, with mixed results. This research was targeted at examining one specific school based career intervention program which set itself the goal of influencing student career decisions toward Engineering.
In 1998, in response to this now widely accepted perception that few young Australians viewed Engineering as a preferred career path, the Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd (REA) began development and implementation of a number of career intervention programs with the goal of encouraging students to take up careers in Engineering. The most well recognised of these is an implementation of the F1inSchools (F1iS) Technology Challenge which was created in the UK in 2002 and first implemented in Australia in 2003. It now runs in 300 schools across Australian and in 33 countries around the world.
F1iS has been designed specifically through its association with F1 racing to attract the intrinsic interests of students. F1iS is based on the fundamentals of Action Learning and utilises role models and industry involvement as motivation modifiers. Anecdotally it has been very successful at influencing the career decisions choices of the students who participate.
The aim of the research was to determine the impact that the F1iS program had on the motivation of the participants towards a career in Engineering. The motivational factors which were studied come from two groups. The first of these is the group of general factors which are known to potentially impact on children’s career motivation which include factors related to intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy and the influence of others in the environment of the students. The second groups of factors were the designed elements of the program itself - namely the use of a project-based Action Learning Engineering activity designed to be “Cool” through the use of the latest technology and interaction with industry role models and heroes.
The research also sought to examine whether there were any relationships between the motivational factors and specific elements of the program and if there were differences in the relationships between these factors and the outcomes for Boys as compared to Girls. It concludes with a comparison of intrinsic motivation towards the profession of Engineering as a general career against the activities of Engineering involved within the F1 in Schools Program. The desired outcome of this research is to offer advice to the Engineering profession and industry to aid the development of strategies for attracting students in its direction. The results of the research confirmed that the F1iS program was able to have a significant impact on the career motivations of the children who participated with 64% of Boys and 35% of Girls indicating that Fi1S had influenced a change in their career motivations toward Engineering. It also provides a foundation for rethinking the way in which we develop interest in Engineering for Boys and Girls.
School/Discipline
International Graduate School of Business
Dissertation Note
Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2011.
Provenance
Copyright 2011 Michael Myers. This work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Australia 3.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/)
Description
xiv, 187 leaves
col. ill.
Includes bibliographic references.
col. ill.
Includes bibliographic references.
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506 0#$fstar $2Unrestricted online access