Tomas Jungert

Engineering students’ experiences of transition from study to work

The focus in this paper is on how students experience their transition from their education to being employed as engineers in relation to the concept of employability. Four cohorts of students in a master’s programme in engineering were monitored annually with a ‘follow‐up’ one year after graduation. Results show that there were differences in the way students talked about their curricular design, career plans, job search, becoming an employee and employable, and job satisfaction. Throughout the interviews certain turning points were identified, where the students had to make various decisions. Many students argued that generic skills and cultural values are best learned in extracurricular activities and in work contexts, and that doing a thesis project in a firm was the best learning experience. During this thesis process, students became conscious of their valuable employability skills, which in the job search process were a good thesis project, a diploma from the programme, self‐efficacy, problem‐solving skills and a broad knowledge base. On the job, the most valuable acquired key skills were considered to be mathematics and subject‐specific knowledge, problem‐solving skills, time management skills, learning skills, and an ability to manage stress and heavy workloads.

School bullying and the mechanisms of moral disengagement

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

Empathy among students in engineering programs

Engineers face challenges when they are to manage project groups and be leaders for organisations because such positions demand skills in social competence and empathy. Previous studies have shown that engineers have low degrees of social competence skills. In this study, the level of empathy as measured by the four subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, perspective taking, fantasy, empathic distress and empathic concern, among engineering students was compared to students in health care profession programmes. Participants were undergraduate students at Linköping University, 365 students from four different health care profession programmes and 115 students from two different engineering programmes. When the empathy measures were corrected for effects of sex, engineering students from one of the programmes had lower empathy than psychology and social worker students on the fantasy and perspective-taking subscales. These results raise questions regarding opportunities for engineering students to develop their empathic abilities. It is important that engineering students acquire both theoretical and practical knowledge and skills regarding empathy.

Self-efficacy and strategies to influence the study environment

This study investigates the relationship between student influence and academic self-efficacy in a sample of 275 students in two Masters programmes in Engineering. Students in only one of the programmes studied according to problem-based learning (PBL). Results indicate that students choosing strategies to influence course content or structure, through course evaluation and recommending changes to teachers had significantly higher self-efficacy beliefs than those who did not use such strategies. It is principally the students who studied according to PBL that demonstrated higher self-efficacy beliefs, actively influenced their studies through engaging in debate with teachers. It can be claimed that increasing student self-efficacy beliefs is important not only in academic performance, but also in influencing in a positive way the institutional atmosphere.

Motives for becoming a teacher and their relations to academic engagement and dropout among student teachers

Difficulties in attracting student teachers have resulted in research focusing on student teachers’ motives for studying to join the profession. Because previous findings are mixed, the first aim of this study was to explore motives for students to become teachers. A second aim was to explore the relationship between teachers’ motives and their academic engagement and dropout rates at the end of their studies. A sample of 333 student teachers at a Swedish university completed a questionnaire measuring motives for becoming a teacher and their academic engagement. The best model of a confirmatory factor analyses defined three motivational factors as altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic motives. A path analysis showed a negative significant relationship between the altruistic motive and dropout, mediated by academic engagement, whereas the relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motives and academic engagement were not significant.

Unique and Interactive Effects of Moral Emotions and Moral Disengagement on Bullying and Defending among School Children

The first aim of the present study was to examine in a single model how moral disengagement and moral emotions were related to bullying and defending behavior among schoolchildren. The second aim was to test whether the two moral dimensions interacted with each other to explain behavior in bullying situations. Data were collected from 561 Swedish students. Moral disengagement was positively associated with bullying and negatively associated with defending, whereas moral emotions score was negatively associated with bullying and positively associated with defending. Moreover, students who scored high in moral emotions did not tend to bully other students, irrespective of their levels of moral disengagement, whereas when the moral emotions score was low bullying behavior increased with increasing levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, moral disengagement was negatively related to defending behavior at low levels of moral emotions, but not when moral emotions were high.

Self-efficacy beliefs in mathematics, native language literacy and foreign language amongst boys and girls with and without mathematic difficulties

The aim was to examine achievement and self-efficacy in mathematics and native and foreign language literacy in children with specific mathematic LD (MD-only), children with comorbid mathematic and reading difficulties (MD-RD), and compare them with children without LD (controls), as well as to explore gender differences. Participants were 143 fifth-graders in Sweden who completed National Tests and measures of self-efficacy in mathematics and literacy. The MD-RD children displayed lower self-efficacy in all subjects compared to the controls, even when controlling for achievement. The MD-only children displayed lower self-efficacy in mathematics, completely accounted for by their lower mathematic achievement. The lower self-efficacy for children with learning disabilities may primarily be explained by their history of low achievement interpreted as failures and their emphasis on negative appraisals.

Ethnocultural Empathy Among Students in Health Care Education

In a multicultural society, ethnocultural empathy has become an important element in most health settings and development of this capacity has become a central component for health care professionals in their interactions with patients and clients. In this study, differences in basic empathy and ethnocultural empathy were explored in a sample of 365 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of four master’s programs in health care (medicine, psychology, nursing, and social work). Results showed that it was mainly psychology students in the first semester who had significantly higher general empathic skills and ethnocultural empathic skills compared to students in the other study programs. Few signs of differences between students in their first and in later semesters were obtained. The observed differences may be explained by (a) levels of admission grades and applications requirements or (b) different cultures and expectations from the surrounding milieus in the investigated study programs.

Science adjustment, parental and teacher autonomy support and the cognitive orientation of science students

Research has shown that autonomy support has positive effects on academic development, but no study has examined how systemising cognitive orientation is related to important outcomes for science students, and how it may interact with autonomy support. This prospective investigation considered how systemising and support from teachers and parents influence motivation, self-efficacy and science performance of science students. Totally, two hundred and eighty eight high school students (143 females and 145 males) completed surveys at two times and records of their achievements were collected. Teachers’ autonomy support and systemising were significantly positively related to motivation, self-efficacy and achievement over time, while parental support for autonomy was not directly related to the outcomes. Finally, two significant interaction effects showed that the relation of parental autonomy support to motivation and self-efficacy was moderated by systemising. This is the first study to demonstrate that autonomy support may be especially helpful for individuals with an intrinsic disposition in a domain.

A longitudinal study of engineering students’ approaches to their studies

This longitudinal study draws on data from a larger project and examines how students’ perceptions of their opportunities to influence their study environment may be enacted in approaches aimed at influencing their studies, and whether this changes during the course of their studies. Ten students from a 4.5‐year Master’s programme in Engineering were studied throughout their education by means of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews, which were analysed thematically. The results indicate that students’ perceptions of their study environment were enacted in three approaches aimed at influencing their study environment: (i) to adapt to the environment and to study alone; (ii) to try to change the programme, to create an individual curriculum and to interact with teachers; and (iii) to cooperate with their peers. The thematic analysis suggests that students’ perceptions of their study environment were enacted in the different approaches and that these changed along with external demands in the programme.