Relationship between High School STEM Self-Competency and Behavior in a Parametric Building Design Activity

Building designers receive discipline-specific education which prepares them to address distinct design goals, but they may struggle to address criteria not considered part of their profession based on their disciplinary identity. In STEM subjects, such as engineering, high school students' perception of their own competency is positively related to their performance. Although this is beneficial for engineering design, it is unclear how students who identify strongly with STEM prior to professional training may account for non-STEM design objectives compared to STEM-related criteria. This research considers how pre-design students' STEM self-competency can predict their behavior when responding to a building design task with technical and nontechnical goals. A study was conducted which asked high school students about their STEM competency and instructed them to develop a conceptual skyscraper design in an age-accessible, digital design environment. The design tool contained a parametric model which provided visual and performance feedback about energy use, daylight, and cost as the students changed skyscraper variables. Students with higher STEM self-competency (SC) selected higher-performing designs, viewed more design iterations, and ranked the building's appearance as their lowest priority. These results inform future design educators about student outlook prior to any professional training and reveal potential limitations in student approaches to multidisciplinary building design tasks.