Exploring Influence of Student Self-efficacy and Participation on Subject Integration Through Design Competition

STEAM education uses the concept of subject integration to cultivate talents to solve complex problems. Design education also adopts project-based learning to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to enhance student's learning effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of student's self-efficacy on the ability of interdisciplinary learning and design integration and participation in the learning and integration through a design competition. This research is based on the performance in a short-term design competition in which teams of students from grades 1 to 3 work in groups to design and solve space problems. During the competition, teachers gave students lectures on subject knowledge and technology. Then, a questionnaire survey was conducted after the competition results were announced. A total of 152 valid questionnaires were collected. The research result confirmed that this competition increased student engagement and interest. Through the competition, students' knowledge and technical ability in various disciplines were promoted. In addition, the competition helped students enhance their design professional ability and improve the learning effect of integrated interdisciplinary teaching. The result also presented that self-efficacy and participation of students in different grades, and that the effects on professional learning effectiveness and interdisciplinary integration ability were different. This research provided an empirical and design-competition approach to the implementation of STEAM discipline integration.