Conference Session

Issues of Cooperative Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joe Raelin, Northeastern University; Jerry Hamann, University of Wyoming; David Whitman, University of Wyoming; Rachelle Reisberg, Northeastern University

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

careers haveresulted in fewer women entering these fields. Since then, empirical studies have supported thistheory, finding that college-aged women’s self-efficacy for traditionally female occupations wassignificantly higher than their self-efficacy within male-dominated fields.17, 18Conceptual FrameworkThis study seeks to develop a theory that examines the effects cooperative education as well asother factors (demographics, contextual supports) have on self-efficacy beliefs. It includes well-established measures of science/ math/ engineering academic self-efficacy and of career self-efficacy while introducing a new construct, work self-efficacy. Figure 1 displays the conceptualframework for the study, depicting the relationships among

Conference Session

Cooperative Education and Engineering

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tylisha Baber, Michigan State University; Norman Fortenberry, National Academy of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

students’ perceptions of industrialinternships. However, students’ self perceptions of their skills and abilities, a concept called“self-efficacy,” are a critical aspect of their ability to perform in a given situation [7]. Anunpublished work by researchers at the Cambridge-MIT Institute studied how cooperativeeducational programs affected the self-efficacy of engineering students[8] and found thatcooperative educational programs exerted a positive influence on students’ self-efficacy.Academic and Labor Market Outcomes of Cooperative EducationStudies have been done to investigate the positive academic and labor market outcomes resultingfrom cooperative educational experiences in engineering disciplines. As examples, both Gardneret. al.[9] and