School children's and industrialists' attitudes towads engineering and manufacturing by Jane Tonkinson and Brian Gazey This paper details research into y o u q people's and industrialists' perceptions of engineering and manujacturing. A database was constructedjom completed questionnaires which contained information about the attitudes of 1601 Birmingham school children towards engineering and manu$cturing, and the attitudes of 108 industrialists and the image they think school ihildren have o f engineering and manu$cturing. From this research it can be concluded that the pupils had a j i r more fdvourable opinion o f engineering and manufacturing than they were thought to have by the industrialists.

Introduction

n the engineering and manufacturing industry there is a shlls shortage which is ste.idily increasing. This is a matter of concern to Birmingham-based engineering and manufacturing conipanies of all

sizes as it affects both the general state of engineering and recruitment into their areas of activity. This prompted The Birmingham Centre for Manufacturing to fund a research project designed to study young people's perceptions of engineering and manufac- turing.

These concerns about British engineering/manu- facturing and the skills shortage have existed for a long time, but have increasingly come to the fore as a conse- quence of rapid technological a.nd social change'-3. Problems which have been identified include poor academic standards in science, technology and mathematics; the lack of vocational and economic relevance of secondary education (this issue is currently being addressed by General National Vocational Qualifications); the decline of the manufacturing base; low pay; poor career prospects; llow social status and gender stereotyping of careers for eniployees within the engineering and manufacturing industry+-".

It is known that there are specific skill deficiencies throughout engineering and manufacturing. In addition higher education institutions, for example, are having difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of adequately qualified engineering undergraduates'.

This issue of attracting young people into engineering and manufacturing is being addressed by various educational initiatives which enhance the image of engineering and manuf;icturingx-". Some of

the organisations jointly involved with this nation-wide promotion of engineering and manufacturing in schools are the Science and Technology Regional Organisations (SATKOs), the Education Business Partnerships (EBP) and the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). They support specific activities, such as CREST Awards and Engineering Education Schemes, as well as recruitment, training and net- worhng of Neighbourhood Engineers. A large number of industrial companies, ranging from British Gas to Vauxhall Cars, provide resources and produce activity packs describing manufacturing, engineering and associated processes involved in their product. These are available for use within schools throughout the whole country.

An example ofa short-term promotional scheme for children between the ages of five and seven was the 'Today's Engineers' competition. This was a national competition, which was co-sponsored by eight of the UK's foremost engineering organisations, incluchng The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). Over 8000 children participated in the competition, in which children were asked to draw and colour a picture either of an engineer at work or of something that an engineer makes. The competition was run in conjunction with the national week of science, engineering and technology. Its aim was to demon- strate that engineering plays an important part in our lives and to prove that it can be both creative and fun".

The research reported here investigated whether engineers and those engaged in manufacturing have a high or low opinion of themselves and their value to society. What sort of image does 'British Engineering and Manufacturing Incorporated' (BEM Inc.) project

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on which others can base Table 1: Total number and gender of participating school naire demonstrates how an individual’s perception of their oplmons? Does the different career aspirations image that BEM Inc.

believes it projects corres- influences ~. their final

Children in each Year group

pond to the attitudes held Male 452 423 decisions. The results by society, especially Female 180 516 indicate whether the child children who w d one day Missing 4 26 has been exposed to any hopefully enter engin- Total 636 965 engineermg and manu- eering and manufacturing? facturing schemes, re-

Y

To gain an understanding of these issues this research examined the perceptions of people engaged in local industry in order to investigate how they saw their roles and what they believed school children would thnk.

Study details

The research was based in Birmingham, a city situated in the industrial heart of the Midlands, so it is envisaged that the data taken here would mirror national trends because Birmingham has a very large and diverse socio- economic population.

The pupils Two local education/business partnerships already

estabhshed in Birmingham were chosen to participate in the survey. This allowed investigations to focus on specific regions within the city, so that concise observations and conclusions could be drawn fiom a geographically close area. The partnersbps chosen reflect:

single and nuxed gender schools inner and outer city schools grant-maintained and Local Education Authoritc/ (LEA) mantamed schools imnority composition

0 size of school, both large and small secondary schools

Fifteen schools witbn the two partnershps were selected to participate in the survey The schools and year groups to be given the questionnaire were chosen by double-blind statistical procedures13J4.

The questionnaire was given to pupils in the following year groups:

Year 7 (pupils aged 11 to 12). School chddren in this group are in their first year at senior school. Ths part of the survey provides a set of data on the attitudes of children making the transition &om junior school to senior school and demonstrates whether a cMtl conmences secondary education with positive or negative perceptions towards engineering and

- sources or activities within their first three years at secondary school, and whether ths has influenced their perception of and attitudes to engineering and manufacturing.

The main subjects of tlm survey were 1601 school cMdren: 875 males, 696 females and 30 pupils who did not state their sex (see Table 1). The average ages for each year group were 11.5 and 13.6 years.

The industrialists People employed in industry fiom 50 small, medlum

and large companies based in Birmingham were selected to participate in the survey. Twenty-five companies responded, whch gave a total of 108 industriahi: 100 males and 8 females. Detds of these respondents are shown in Table 2.

T h e pupils’ questionnaive Ths was developed and tailored to the two specific

year groups and adrmnistered to the schools withn the two partnershps. The questionnaire was split into sections whch consisted of forced-choice response questions and open-answer questions.

The first set of questions consisted of 34 Likert-style rating ~ c a l e s ’ ~ , ’ ~ a forced-choice response format. These provided the pupils with statements about engineering and manufacturing and asked them to indxate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each ~tatement’~,’~. Five options were given: ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’, ‘strongly dlsagree’ and ‘don’t know’. Underneath each of the five choices and next to each statement was a box; the respondent selected the box whch most closely matched their attitude towards the corresponding statement. Likert-style scales were used for the first section as they are easy to comprehend, easy to answer and take minimal time to respond to.

The industrialists’ questionnaive The industriahsts’ survey was split into sections

whch again consisted of forced-choice questions and open-answer questions.

The first set of questions was the same as that used in manufacturing. the Pupils’ questionnaire. Year 9 (pup& aged 13 to Respondents were asked to 14). In this year group use their judgment to the students have to indlcate how they thought choose which options 25 1 pup& would respond to they wdl be talung for

The second section also GCSE. The question-

Table 2: Gender and age of the participating industrialists

the questions. 19 28 35 26

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consisted of the same 34 statements presented to the pupils but ths time the industrialists were asked to indicate in the appropriate column their own personal opinion towards the question, thereby demonstrating the attitudes people worlung in industry have towards engineering and manufacturing.

The procedure An important requirement for

adrmnistering the pupils’ survey was that it should cause minimal dlsruption to normal lessons, therefore the majority of the questionnaires were comple:ted Fig. 1 Response to the statement ’Engineeringlmanufacturing is a boring job’

during ‘tutor time’ or ‘personal, social and moral education time’ (PSME time). An advantage of ths was that the students were in a relaxed state, rather than in the middle of a taught class, when the answers to the questions might possibly have been influenced by the subject matter of that particular lesson.

The majority of the questionnaires were administered by the researcher personally during the 1993-1994 academic year. Questionnaires were distributed to the class and assistance was given whenever any questions were raised by the students. In the case of some groups, whose members Fig. 2 Response to the statement ’Engineeringlmanufacturing is an interesting job’

I _

had little comprehension of the Enghsh language, the researcher read out the indwidual questions. Three schools conducted the surveys themselves.

The industriahsts’ questionnaires were dstributed by post to companies. A covering letter and six questionnaires were sent to the rnanaging director of each company, who in turn chstributed the remaining surveys to selected members of staK Completed responses were returned to the researcher. The list of companies tahng part in the survey was provided by the Birmingham Centre for Manufacturing.

Summary of results and initial findings

All of the percentages quoted here have been taken &om valid responses only. Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) tests for two unrelated samples were used to reveal any differences between what the industriahsts perceived the pupils would think about the statements and what the real opinions of the pupils actually were. In all of these tests the coniidence level p .was 0.05, i.e. 95%.

The pupils’ responses Overall, the pupils’ response to the questionnaire is

very encouraging: their perception of engineering and

manufacturing seems to be quite positive. The data received demonstrated that in the case of

18 of the 34 statements the students’ perspectives were different fi-om the views that industriahsts expected them to have. The contrary opinions appear to be mainly associated with the more ‘controversial’ statements, involving statements such as ‘engineering is a boring job’ and ‘engineering is a creative job’.

‘Engineering is a boring job’ and ‘engineering is interesting’ are opposing statements: one is positive towards engineering and manufacturing whereas the other is negative. The responses to these statements are shown in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively. It can b,e seen that there is a good correlation between these sets of results, therefore it can be stated that the majority ofthe school chddren thought that engineering and manufacturing is interesting and not boring. However, it can also be seen that a high proportion of the pupils were unsure about the statements. This is something whch needs to be rectified, since if pupils are unsure about industry, their apparent apathy may influence their peers. These results also demonstrate that industriallsts believe that school children may well consider engineering and manufacturing to be boring and uninteresting, which is not how they feel about the profession themselves.

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Fig. 3 Response to the statement ’Engineering/manufacturing is a creative job

Fig. 4 Response to the statement ’Engineeringlmanufacturing is an exciting job

The response to the statement ‘engineering is a creative job’ is shown in Fig. 3. This shows that industriahsts believe that school children consider that engineering and manufacturing requires little creativity, which is again opposite to what pupils actually think, as nearly three quarters of the pupils replied that engineering and manufacturing is creative. This could be due to the fact that industry produces tangible objects such as machines and articles whch are used in everyday life. The KS tests confirmed that children believe that engineering and manufacturing is creative, in agreement with the industrialists’ own opinions.

Fig. 4 shows that industriahsts seem to presume that children do not view engineering and manufacturing as an exciting career. This correlates to the previous statement where the respondents thought that pupils would think engineering uninteresting and boring. However pupils did seem to hold the opposite view, therefore agreeing with the perceptions of the industrialists again.

Gender stereotyping It should be noted that school children did not

perceive engineering and manufacturing as a male

dominated industry in which only men can have or apply forjobs. This is contrary to the popular hypothesis that ‘engineering and manufacturing is a male dominated occupation’. Pupils in the sample seemed to have an idealistic, non-sexist view of the profession. However, they may also have held this view regarding any occupation, not just engineering and manufacturing. Their opinion could have been due to the increase over the past five to ten years of female role- models in both industry and at school. It was noted that in this survey there were no female science, mathematics or technology teachers, hence there were no role models.

Statements regarding the role of women within engineering were included in the questionnaire. Responses to these can be seen in Figs. 5 and 6. Clearly engineers and manufacturers believe that women are very welcome within industry, but the image that they think the profession creates does not encourage women. The survey suggests that industrialists believe that school children do thnk that engineering and manufacturing is male dominated. The KS tests, however, show that children think that either gender could have a role in industry. This could mean that more females

might apply for engineering training schemes, jobs or relevant higher education places if given the appropriate encouragement.

Many men enter industry because it is the ‘done thing’. Their fathers, grandfathers and family members are engineers and/or manufacturers, therefore young men use them as their role model and hence enter the profession. At the present time the majority of students tabng ‘A’ level science subjects, especially physical science and mathematics, are male. The natural progression for them is to take an engineering or science degree. It was found that the majority of those boys who &d want to enter engineering or niaiiufac- turing as a profession d d have a close member of the family employed in industry.

‘Glamour’ a afactov Another point of interest from the survey results is

that school children and industrialists agree that engineering and manufacturing is not a glamorous profession. The responses to the statement ‘engineering offers a glamorous career’ are shown in Fig. 7. The results show that the majority of individual respondents assume that school children believe that the engineering and manufacturing industry does not

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offer a glamorous career, which relates closely to the industrialists’ own opinions. This could mean that the view of the public at large is that engineering is not glamorous. The KS test shows that the pupils also believe that engineering and manu- facturing does not offer a glamorous career, but not as strongly as the industrialists perceived they would.

It is interesting to speculate on the question ‘What makes a profession glamorous?’ Does it need to be an alluring and fascinating occupation? Does it need to be highly regarded by the members of other professions? Is it the occupation of people who are viewed as beautihl and smart, and hence as glamorous? Glamour could possibly relate to mema coverage of certain occupations, and to the position of authority that some people command in the community when they have a certain career. The lives and occupations of doctors, lawyers, emergency service workers and sports personalities are all portrayed to be glamorous.

Television is where the majority of people sub- consciously gain their views and opinions of a world which does not directly involve their lives. Perhaps a television programme which involved an engineer would improve the profession’s glamour factor; for example, an ‘Eastenders’ storyline involving a female engineer who designs cars, or even one who helps in the ‘Arches Garage’; or a ‘Coronation Street’ featuring a male engineer who is a project manager and drives around in a British-built sports car (an E- type Jaguar, perhaps). This apparently frivolous view of the profession could possibly encourage young people into the

Fig. 5 Response to the statement ‘Engineeringlmanufacturing is a job mainly for men’

Fig. 6 Response to the statement ’Engineering/manufacturing is a job mainly done by men’

Fig. 7 Response to the statement ‘Engineeringlmanufacturing is a glamorous career’

industry who had not previously considered it. The image of the profession is not very impressive

and is a neglected factor, and this reflects on recruit- ment. It needs to be addressed, especially as the survey shows that even industrialists believe their occupations to be unglamorous.

This also poses another question: Is glamour really necessary in a job? From this survey it can be seen that the answer is yes.

Resultsfvom the industrialists’ survey The survey results reveal that industrialists believe

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that school children have rather negative attitudes towards engineering and manufacturing, even though their own views of the profession are positive. Perhaps this negative attitude towards other peoples’ views of industry is reflected in the way in which engineers and manufacturers promote their profession to their peers, to other professions and in particular to school chddren. Do engineers and manufacturers feel doomed to failure when they attempt to attract young people into the profession and does this negative attitude inadvertently put people off the industry?

From the data received in the industrihsts’ questionnaire it was seen that the respondents had preconceptions and misconceptions of their industry covering all aspects of their subsequent careers, ranging from the workmg conchtions to the type of skills required. They thought that the profession had an unpleasant working environment, which takes with their belief about school children’s views of the workplace in engineering and manufacturing.

Other preconceptions were that engineering and manufacturing is challenging, demandmg, s k d l l , and &rty but nevertheless interesting. A w n , these correspond broadly to the respondents’ views of school chddren’s attitudes. If industry could become more positive about itself then maybe interest in the profession would increase. Unlike in the UK, in other European and in Far Eastern countries engineering is viewed as a prestigious occupation treated with respect15J6. In these countries there are far fewer problems in trying to attract the right cahbre of student to enter the profession. If Britain could change the perceptions held and widespread preconceptions about industry and engineering, perhaps the recruitment problems would cease.

Conclusions

There are a number of positive features revealed by this research and primarily the overall response to this project was positive.

Pupils at school in the age range 11-13 appear to be largely unaffected by the recent years of recession, which do not appear to have tarnished their generally positive attitude towards engineering and manufac- turing. This was demonstrated by the results in section one ofthe school children’s questionnaire. This showed that industry should take steps to improve its image. It also showed that more positive encouragement is needed before other influences will attract students to engineering and that the general view of industry among the public at large must be changed.

The survey also revealed that industrihsts, although having a high opinion of their industry area, are surprisingly pessimistic about the way in which people outside the industry view them. This is shown by the industriahsts’ expectations of school children’s attitudes. It is important that this erroneous pre- conception is not transmitted to school chddren and every effort should be made to portray engineering and

manufacturing for what it is.

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The authors are with the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.

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