The Development and Validation of the Children’s Engineering Self-Efficacy Scale (CESES)

In order to best prepare future generations to solve societal challenges, students should be provided with a foundation in problem solving skills. Accordingly, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) incorporates engineering design process skills along with the scientific practices. While engineering curriculum opportunities have expanded, research testing the efficacy of engineering design instruction on problem solving skills is limited. Self-efficacy research has long drawn connections of high science self-efficacy to improved attitudes and performance. However, little research has examined engineering design self-efficacy, and none has been conducted with children. This study reports the development and validation of the Children’s Engineering Self-Efficacy Scale (CESES). Participants included 212 children in grades 3-7 from a variety of instructional backgrounds. Initial results showed that the instrument produced a Cronbach’s alpha of .81. Factor analysis resulted in a five-factor model explaining 56.72 % of the variance. Additional analyses showed that the majority of participants had good to high engineering self-efficacy. The result of this research has implications for examining the growth of self-efficacy after STEM or engineering interventions both in school programs and in out-of-school programs.