Are Gender and Academic Track Related to Attitude toward Convergence?‎

Sya’bandari, Y., Ha, M., Lee, JK., & Shin, S.(2020). Are Gender and Academic Track Related to Attitude toward Convergence? A Study Focused on High School Students.

In SH. Paik, KH. Cho, M. Ha, & YH. Kim(Eds.). International Conference on the Advancement of STEAM 2020: Borderless Connectivity (pp. 19-21).

Are Gender and Academic Track Related to Attitude toward Convergence?

A Study Focused on High School Students Yustika Sya’bandari a , Minsu Ha a, Jun-Ki Lee b, Sein Shin c* a

Kangwon National University, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, 24341, Republic of Korea b Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju-si, Jeollabuk-do, 54896, Republic of Korea c Chungbuk National University, Cheongju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do, 28644, Republic of Korea

Abstract: Encouraging students to have a positive attitude toward convergence is crucial to prepare future generations with the ability to solve various and complex problems. This research aims to examine high school students' attitudes toward convergence and its relation to gender and academic track. Responses from 1,186 Indonesian students in tenth (10th) and eleventh (11th) grade were purposively collected. Students respond to the twenty-three items covering five constructs: knowledge, personal relevance, social relevance, interest, and self-efficacy. Data were analyzed using IRT-Rasch analyses, two-way ANOVA, and cluster analyses. The result reveals that high school students' interest and self-efficacy towards convergence are significantly related to gender and track. Female students show significantly higher interest, yet they have lower self-efficacy. Additionally, science track students have significantly higher interest and self-efficacy than humanities students. Finally, customized learning is proposed to improve students' attitudes toward convergence.

Keywords: attitude toward convergence, gender difference, humanities track, science track

Improving students' attitudes toward convergence has been one of the crucial issues in science education. In spite of its various problems, preparing students' positive attitudes toward convergence is one of the essential ways to encourage students to grow into future generations with the ability to solve creatively various complex problems.

1. INTRODUCTION Problems in our daily life are getting complex and they can be dealt with by pulling together insights, techniques, and approaches from different disciplines [4]. Knowledge integration is getting a keyword for the 21st century because it can unify the learning approach that fosters the connections among disciplines in order to build new knowledge in the form of “integrative” concepts. Additionally, knowledge integration has also been recognized as a critical issue of innovation challenge to solve scientific and societal problems. An innovative study that connects disciplines through the scope of convergence.

Most countries have made significant efforts and investments through convergence. The term STEM or STEAM has become a trend in current education.

Nonetheless, the complexity of its approaches, sociocultural influences, and students’ attitude toward convergence has become the issue that keeps remaining to be discussed by many researchers.

Socio-cultural issue such as gender and the academic track has also been a significant issue in this field of study. Therefore, this study investigated the high school students' attitude toward convergence and its relation to gender and academic track.

2. PURPOSE This research focused on the following research objectives:

__________ Manuscript received June 3, 2020; revised June 20, 2020; accepted June 26, 2020.

 Corresponding author Tel.: 82-33-250-6730 Fax. 82-33259-5600; e-mail: yustikasya@gmail.com

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To analyze the validity of the instrument of students' attitudes toward convergence.

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To explore the relation of gender and track to students' attitudes toward convergence.

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To classify students based on attitude toward convergence.

3. METHODOLOGY

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Sya’bandari. Y., Ha, M., Lee, JK., & Shin, S.

towards convergence was generalizable both for males or females in humanities or science class [1].

3.1 Participant Data were collected from 1,186 Indonesian high school students in tenth (10th) and eleventh (11th) grade. A total of 570 (48.06%) were representative of the humanities track, and 616 (51.94%) were representative of the science track. In terms of gender, students consisted of 471 (39.72%) male and 712 (60.03%) female students.

4.2 The relation of gender and academic track on students' attitude toward convergence

3.2 Instrument The instrument administered was the attitude toward convergence instrument for a high school student developed by Shin et al. [6, 7]. It consists of five constructs of attitude: knowledge, personal relevance, social relevance, interest, and self-efficacy. Twentythree items were graded in the 6-point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6).

3.3 Data Analysis This study performed IRT Rasch analysis for the validation of the instrument. The multivariate twoways ANOVA used to analyze the effect of gender and academic track on students' attitudes toward convergence. Additionally, the multivariate cluster analysis was performed to classify students.

Figure 1. The relation of gender and track in five dimensions

4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

There is a significant impact of gender on the interest and self-efficacy dimension. Concerning the academic track, it is also reported a significant impact of the track on social relevance, interest, and selfefficacy.

As is presented in Figure 1, females have higher interest than males both in humanities and science classes. It is interesting to note that females have lower self-efficacy than males both in humanities and science classes. Female students engage more when they learn together in collaborative learning [8]. However, they have less confidence in convergence [3]. Indonesia is a Muslim majority country, which firmly adheres to cultural values. There is gender bias embedded in the culture, which shapes the behavior of how males and females should be. The masculinity stereotyping regarding science are pervasively embedded in society's cognition.

With respect to academic track, science students have significantly higher scores in interest and selfefficacy. Science is one of the tracks that involves many collaborative activities, and it might influence positively the students' attitude towards convergence.

Collaborative learning can provide a learning experience for students by effectively implementing knowledge integration [10].

4.1 The validity of attitudes toward convergence instrument The result reveals the infit and outfit MNSQ values range from 0.72 to 1.38 logit in knowledge construct, 0.80 to 1.16 logit in personal relevance construct, 0.78 to 1.24 logit in social relevance construct, 0.91 to 1.08 logit in interest construct, and 0.76 to 1.11 logit in selfefficacy construct. Overall, the MNSQ value ranged from 0.7 to 1.4, which indicated no misfitting item. No misfitting item means that the attitude towards convergence instrument fits the Rasch model [11]. The items did not need to be revised because every item had a rational function to measure what should be measured. The good fit also indicates that items can consistently interpret the students' responses, and each of the items can contribute to the construction of the measurement [1].

With respect to reliability, each dimension has fair to excellent criteria based on Fischer [2]. The item reliability value was more than 0.90, while the person reliability was categorized as fair. It indicates that the items and student abilities are consistent enough even if repeated in another test taker with the same ability and instrument with the same difficulty [9].

Finally, no DIF item was detected in this research, meaning that the instrument of students' attitude

4.3 The classification of students based on attitudes toward convergence 20

Are Gender and Academic Track Related to Attitude toward Convergence? A Study Focused on High School Students.

[5]

Park, S., & Kim, Y. (2008). Applying petri nets to model customized learning and cooperative learning with competence. International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Seoul, 8(2), 127-132.

[6] Shin, S., Ha, M. S., & Lee, J. K. (2014a).

Difference analysis between groups and the generalizability of the instrument for measuring high school students' attitude toward convergence.

Journal of Learner-Centered Curriculum and Instruction, 14, 107-124.

[7] Shin, S., Ha, M., Lee, J. K., Park, H., Chung, D. H., & Lim, J. K. (2014b). The development and validation of instrument for measuring high school students’ attitude toward convergence.

Journal of the Korean Association for Science Education, 34(2), 123-134.

[8] Stump, G. S., Hilpert, J. C., Husman, J., Chung, W. T., & Kim, W. (2011). Collaborative learning in engineering students: Gender and achievement.

Journal of Engineering Education, 100(3), 475497.

[9] Tornabene, R. E., Lavington, E., & Nehm, R. H. (2018). Testing validity inferences for Genetic Drift Inventory scores using Rasch modeling and item order analyses. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 11(1), 6.

[10] Willey, K., & Gardner, A. (2012). Collaborative learning frameworks to promote a positive learning culture. In 2012 Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings (pp. 1-6). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE. [11] Wright, B. D., & Linacre, J. M. (1994).

Reasonable mean-square fit values. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 8(3), 370.

Figure 2. The classification of students Based on findings, it is revealed three types of the group according to students' attitudes toward convergence, they named as High-Knowledge Convergence (HKC), High-Interest Convergence (HIC), and Low Self-Efficacy Convergence (LSeC).

It is suggested to provide a program of customized learning to improve students’ attitudes toward convergence. Customized learning might let the teacher adjust the learning process based on students' various needs and their abilities to provide an effective environment for education [5]. Customize learning is related to the differentiation instruction program where the instruction is designed based on “whom the teacher teaches”.

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Fisher, J. W. (2000). Objectivity in psychosocial measurement: what, why, how. Journal of Outcome Measurement, 4(2), 527-563.

Jordan, K., & Carden, R. (2017). Self-efficacy and gender in STEM track. Modern Psychological Studies, 22(2), 8.

National Research Council. (2014). Convergence: facilitating transdisciplinary integration of life sciences, physical sciences, engineering, and beyond. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.

Yustika Sya’bandari is an Indonesian, pursuing a Master's degree at Kangwon National University. Her research experiences mostly about students’ attitudes on learning STEM and relation with its psychological and socio-cultural aspects. Particularly, She is interested in the cognitive biases in learning such as essentialism, which pervasively can drive students’ belief of individual characteristics as natural (e.g., gender) that might limit students in pursuing STEM.

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