Promoting persistence in the biological and medical sciences: An expectancy-value approach to intervention.

Abstract

A wide range of occupations require science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills, yet almost half of students who intend to pursue a postsecondary STEM education abandon these plans before graduating from college. This attrition is especially pronounced among underrepresented groups (i.e., racial/ethnic minorities and first-generation college students). We conducted a 2-year follow-up of a utility-value intervention that had been implemented in an introductory biology course. This intervention was previously shown to improve performance in the course, on average and especially among underrepresented students, reducing the achievement gap. The goal of the present study was to examine whether the intervention also impacted persistence in the biomedical track throughout college. The intervention had a more positive impact on long-term persistence for students who were more confident that they could succeed at the beginning of the course, and this effect was partially driven by the extent to which students reflected on the personal relevance of biological topics in their essays. This mechanism was distinct from the process that had been found to underlie intervention effects on performance—engagement with course material—suggesting that utility-value interventions may affect different academic outcomes by initiating distinct psychological processes. Although we did not find that the intervention was differentially effective for underrepresented students in terms of persistence, we found that positive effects on performance were associated with increased persistence for these students. Results suggest that utility-value interventions in an introductory course can be an effective strategy to promote persistence in the biomedical sciences throughout college.

Training Learning Strategies to Promote Self-Regulation and Transfer: The Knowledge, Belief, Commitment, and Planning Framework

“…Utility-value interventions are also reported to improve course performances, with this improvement mediated by increases in motivation and task engagement (Canning et al, 2018; Harackiewicz et al, 2016; Hulleman et al, 2017; Priniski et al, 2019). Further, a recent follow-up study showed that 2 years after the students were given the utility-value intervention (in introductory biology), they generally showed more persistence in a biomedical track than students in a control group (Hecht et al, 2019). With regard to primary and secondary school settings, learning-strategy interventions that included a task-value component were among the most effective in enhancing student-performance outcomes (Donker et al, 2014).…”

Understanding Long-term Effects of Motivation Interventions in a Changing World

“…Follow-up analyses of the Harackiewicz et al (2016) study evidence long-term effects that are consistent with this type of non-recursive process and extend further in time (Hecht et al, 2018). Students’ enrollment in a second biology course and biomedical major were assessed two years after Harackiewicz et al (2016) implemented the UV intervention in an introductory biology course.…”

“…Then, after these processes are well understood, development and implementation of an intervention to influence these processes will be more effective. For instance, an initial study may document a “channel” within a university by which performance in a challenging introductory college science course strongly predicts whether or not students continue to take similar courses throughout college, and ultimately obtain a degree in that field (Hecht et al, 2018). This documentation would provide a strong basis for intervening upon this non-recursive chain of effects by attempting to improve performance in that particular introductory course.…”

Examining Teacher Recruitment Strategies in England

“…Theories and research from organisational psychology, where recruitment research is well-established, and from educational psychology, where research on learning-focused utility value interventions is robust, might offer some insight into how teacher recruitment strategies and messages might be shaped. Experimental studies using utility value approaches show that increasing the perceptions of subject relevance and usefulness increases motivation and achievement (e.g., Hulleman, Kosovich, Barron, & Daniel, 2017) and increases long-term persistence in a field (Hecht et al, 2019). Similar research approaches that deliver targeted utility value messages to potential applicants-using a novel expectancy-value-fit approach-could prove fruitful for teacher recruitment.…”