Abstract
Background:
Hands-on making (e.g., “Maker”) has become prevalent in current educational settings. To understand the role that students’ epistemic curiosity plays in hands-on making contests, this study explored its correlation to students’ positive affect and continuance intention to participate in a hands-on making contest called “PowerTech”. To circumvent parent involvement, PowerTech requires students to produce miniatures in the morning and use the miniatures to take part in relay racing and tug-of-war competitions in the afternoon.
Material and methods:
Data from 514 individuals were collected and subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling by AMOS 20.
Results:
The results revealed that the two types of epistemic curiosity (EC), interest (I-type) and informational deprivation type (D-type), played a mediating role in bonding participants’ positive affect and their continuance intention to join a hands-on making contest.
Conclusions:
The implication of this study suggests that students’ epistemic curiosity can be aroused in the process of participating in competitive hands-on making contests such as PowerTech.
License
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article Type: Research Article
EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, Volume 12, Issue 9, September 2016, 2267-2279
https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1276a
Publication date: 29 Jun 2016
Article Views: 2614
Article Downloads: 1519
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