Improving STEM self-efficacy with a scalable classroom intervention targeting growth mindset and success attribution

Abstract

Helping more university students, especially under-represented minorities, complete STEM degrees and enter the STEM workforce has proven to be difficult. Those most at risk benefit least from innovations addressing only pedagogy or curriculum. Research suggests that we must influence students' self-efficacy: their belief that they can overcome setbacks and ultimately succeed. We present the results of a four-year NSF-funded project to develop and test a brief, scalable classroom intervention for improving students' STEM self-efficacy by teaching growth mindset and success attribution. We developed and validated a questionnaire to measure STEM self-efficacy, growth mindset, and perceived academic control. Using a quasi-experimental design with a control treatment, at three universities with very different student demographics (total N = 853), HLM analysis shows that our intervention significantly increases students' growth mindset but not their self-efficacy or perceived academic control.

Implementing Competency-Based Grading Improves the Performance of Women and First Generation Students in Introductory Physics

“…We intend to explore further the mechanism(s) by which ALPaCA grading results in improvements in student performance and why the scales of these improvements vary among student cohorts. In the short term, we plan to use existing instruments [3,27,32,33,43] to assess how student self-efficacy with physics [18,27,41,43] and mindset [1,10,34] are affected by the implementation of ALPaCA grading. Since self-efficacy and mindset are both linked with student performance [29,41], we hypothesize that students will experience a more positive change (or less negative change) in their physics self-efficacy when ALPaCA is used.…”

Three critical issues that shape and complicate STEM self-efficacy intervention research: Reflections and analysis from an interdisciplinary research team

“…The SIISP research project is quantitative and utilizes a quasi-experimental research design, and the research findings report [11] is typical for such studies. This paper, however, uses reflective practice to take a qualitative approach to understanding the practice of self-efficacy research.…”