A Narrative Approach to Understand Students’ Identities and Choices

Holmegaard, Henriette Tolstrup; Ulriksen, Lars; Madsen, Lene Møller

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7793-4_3

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The personal value of science to someone's identity has been increasingly explored in prior research, but generally only through qualitative methods (e.g. Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2010;Holmegaard, Ulriksen, & Madsen, 2015). The results presented above highlighted that students' personal value of science predicted science intentions across all students (at a higher magnitude than students' interest in science), and for under-confident and for accurately evaluating students, but not for over-confident students.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Students’ intentions towards studying science at upper-secondary school: the differential effects of under-confidence and over-confidence

Sheldrake

2016

International Journal of Science Education

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Understanding students' intentions to study science at uppersecondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education. Prior research has highlighted that students' science confidence has been associated with their intentions to study science further, although under-confidence and over-confidence (lower or higher confidence than expected, given someone's attainment) have not been considered in detail. Accordingly, this study explored whether under-confident, accurately evaluating, and over-confident students expressed different attitudes towards their science education, and explored how under-confidence and over-confidence might influence students' science intentions. The questionnaire responses of 1523 students from 12 secondary schools in England were considered through analysis of variance and predictive modelling. Underconfident students expressed consistently lower science attitudes than accurately evaluating and over-confident students, despite reporting the same science grades as accurately evaluating students. Students' intentions to study science were predicted by different factors in different ways, depending on whether the students were under-confident, accurate, or over-confident. For accurately evaluating and over-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-efficacy beliefs (their confidence in their expected future science attainment). For under-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-concept beliefs (their confidence in currently 'doing well' or 'being good' at science). Many other differences were also apparent. Fundamentally, under-confidence may be detrimental not simply through associating with lower attitudes, but through students considering their choices in different ways. Under-confidence may accordingly require attention to help ensure that students' future choices are not unnecessarily constrained. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Students’ intentions towards studying science at upper-secondary school: the differential effects of under-confidence and over-confidence

Sheldrake

2016

International Journal of Science Education

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“…Because the survey data was collected before the decision to leave university had been made, the students' responses concerning how they perceived different aspects of their teaching-learning environment were not given in retrospect at a time when they had already left the programme. Hence, the responses provide an opportunity to compare the perceptions of the teachinglearning environment of stayers and leavers at a time when they were all active students, thus reducing the risk of the leavers' perceptions of their experiences being affected by their decision to leave (Holmegaard et al, 2015). This means that when we find that leavers tend to perceive the study activities as less interesting or relevant than stayers do, this reflects a difference in the experience as it was perceived while both groups were still studying.…”

Section: Methodological Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned previously, the various factors interact and it is this intersection rather than the individual factors that may cause students to decide to leave. Therefore, even though statistical analyses have found that the grade-point average from high school affects a student's relative risk of dropping out more than does the educational level of the parents, which in turn has a stronger effect than the student's gender (Ulriksen, Madsen & Holmegaard, 2015) the decisions and trajectories of the students are not caused by these traits alone. The factors interact with each other, which can be seen in the different hazard ratios in simple analyses compared to multiple analyses (ibid.).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most cases, quantitative as well as qualitative studies are undertaken with informants who have left their study programme and are asked to look back and in retrospect explain their decision to dropout. However, the way particular experiences are perceived and understood may change as the position from which the experiences are looked at changes (Bruner, 1990;Holmegaard, Ulriksen, & Madsen, 2015). This means that the way students perceive the teaching-learning environment may appear different to them before and after they made the decision to leave their programme.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are leavers different from stayers?

Bager-Elsborg

Herrmann

Troelsen

et al. 2019

Uniped

Self Cite

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Dropout causes are varied, as is the way in which they are researched. In this paper, we study the correlation between student perceptions of the teaching-learning environment and dropping out by investigating the interaction between students and the teaching-learning environment before the students make the decision to stay or leave. Survey data from 4,339 students at a major research-intensive Danish university combined with administrative data were analysed, and the results point to two main differences between stayers and leavers. First, students who later decided to leave university found their courses to be less interesting and less relevant compared to the experience of the students staying, and second, students with a high academic self-efficacy belief are less at risk of dropping out of their university studies. A methodological strength of the study is that student perceptions were measured when the students were all still enrolled. This reduces the risk of the leavers' perception being affected by their decision to leave.

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“…In order to more completely analyse the role of quantum mechanics in students' pathways into physics, this study puts a focus on how students relate back to the course a few years later. While the stories students tell may well change over the years and be adapted to the situation (Holmegaard et al, 2015), the focus of this analysis is on students' own sense-making of their experiences and not on an exact representation of events. In this way, the accounts of students at the time of the interview are enlightening.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%