Cognitive Abilities and Motivational Processes in High School Students' Situational Engagement and Achievement in Science

Abstract

Building on Snow's (1989) idea of 2 pathways to achievement outcomes, a performance and a commitment pathway, this study examined how cognitive and motivational factors associated with each of these pathways, respectively, contributed to the prediction of achievement outcomes in science. The sample consisted of 491 10thand 11th-grade high school students. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that (a) students' cognitive abilities were the strongest predictors of their performance in science as measured by standardized test scores; (b) motivational processes enhanced the predictive validity for science test scores and grades beyond the variance accounted for by ability; and (c) motivational processes were the strongest predictors of students' commitment to science in the form of situational engagement and anticipated choices of science-related college majors and careers. These results are consistent with Snow's (1989) conjecture that both performance and commitment pathway-related factors are necessary for understanding the full range of person-level inputs to achievement outcomes.In this age of information and technology, science education plays an important role in preparing young people for the future, both as employees and as members of information-and technology-rich societies. Today, as in the Cold War era, there is widespread interest among educators, policymakers, and researchers, around the world in understanding the determinants of science learning and achievement such that educators can better prepare young people for participation in the world that lies ahead of them.

Animated pedagogical agents effects on enhancing student motivation and learning in a science inquiry learning environment

“…We thought that the female participants in the experiment would mainly fall in the latter category and, therefore, would benefit more than the males from motivational scaffolding. In line with other research on self-efficacy in science (e.g., Catsambis 1995;Lau and Roeser 2002;Mattern and Schau 2002;Osborne et al 2003;Yeung et al 2010), the girls in our study were found to start with significantly lower self-efficacy than the boys. However, the data further showed that the absolute level of these appraisals left room for improvement for both boys and girls.…”

“…Another factor is that motivation affects learning only indirectly. It is a mediator that influences facets of task engagement such as goal setting, task choice, effort, and persistence (e.g., Järvelä et al 2008;Lau and Roeser 2002;Vollmeyer and Rheinberg 2006). In turn, these mediators influence learning.…”

“…In the agent condition, students see and hear the APA in the environment. Special attention is given to the issue of gender because research on science learning repeatedly reports lower motivation for girls (e.g., Catsambis 1995;Lau and Roeser 2002;Mattern and Schau 2002;Osborne et al 2003;Yeung et al 2010).…”

Identifying events that impact self-efficacy in physics learning

“…When we extend this segment we also see a social persuasion opportunity unfolding for Gina in the final lines of the segment (turns [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. She may remember Lisa's interruption later and judge her ability to write the expression for displacement from an area under the curve based upon this experience.…”

“…Studies have shown that self-efficacy is able to predict a university student's persistence in science majors as well as science career choices [9,10,13,14,16]. Additionally, researchers have found that self-efficacy can predict achievement in science for high school students [24,25] and university students [8][9][10][11][12]. At Florida International University, an hispanic-serving institution in the southeastern United States, we have also found that a student's self-efficacy in physics at the beginning of an introductory physics course predicts the likelihood of a student passing that same course [26].…”