Navigating the First Semester: An Exploration of Short‐Term Changes in Motivational Beliefs Among Engineering Undergraduates

Abstract

Background The first semester in undergraduate engineering is often challenging for students, making this a potentially fruitful time period for exploring motivational changes and relations between motivational beliefs and achievement. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of the current study was to examine changes in implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs across the first semester of undergraduate engineering education, to investigate how these beliefs may contribute to first‐semester achievement, and to explore changes in students’ perceptions of the relative contributions of effort and ability/intelligence to grades. Design/Method Data from first‐time, full‐time engineering undergraduates at a large Midwestern university were collected at Weeks 1 and 13 of the first semester. Analyses were replicated across two cohorts (2013 and 2014). Results On average, students entered and ended the semester with relatively incremental and positive effort beliefs. Surprisingly, incremental beliefs did not predict grade point average (GPA). Positive effort beliefs were associated with GPA in both cohorts. Findings regarding the role that perceived effort plays in achievement were replicated across cohorts. The average trajectory was as follows: at Week 1, students perceived that ability/intelligence was the primary contributor to high school achievement but anticipated that effort would play a greater role in undergraduate coursework; at Week 13, students on average reflected that the role of effort was less than originally anticipated. Conclusion Although implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs remained fairly stable across the first semester, students in both cohorts exhibited similar shifts in perceptions of the importance of effort (relative to ability/intelligence) for academic success.

Multidimensional Item Response Theory for Factor Structure Assessment in Educational Psychology Research

“…The research questions and analyses in this manuscript are sufficiently distinct from two other publications which have drawn from the Effort Beliefs Scale from this dataset(Honken et al, 2014;Snyder et al, 2018).Frontiers in Education | www.frontiersin.org…”

Tailoring Construction Management Instruction to the Emerging Adult Learner

“…Adult learners are internally motivated ((e.g., learning for leaning's sake) towards their subjects, and set short-and long-term goals actively. They are also are motivated by understanding the fundamentals of the topic based on their prior experiences [4,37] and are more goal-directed than many traditional university students who pursue strategic or surface learning. As a result of adult learners' interest in and positive motivation for the subject, they are more willing than traditional students to increase time on task.…”

Student perceptions and persistence : taking a person-centered approach to understand undergraduate engineering retention.

“…Related to students' competence beliefs are their implicit beliefs about intelligence, expectations of brilliance, and self-efficacy in engineering. In the extant literature focusing on engineering retention, more is known about the relationship between engineering competence or self-efficacy and engineering retention (e.g., Huang, Taddese, & Walter, 2000) compared to students' implicit beliefs about intelligence (e.g., Snyder, Barr, Honken, Pittard, & Ralston, 2018) or expectations of brilliance (e.g., Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer, & Freeland, 2015). In this section, I describe some of the competence-and experience-related beliefs that are often studied independently before later examining which profiles emerge from the combinations of these types of beliefs.…”

“…This suggests that students vary in their perceptions of whether or not they can improve their own intelligence, and these perceptions are likely be related to their persistence in their undergraduate engineering programs. Although there is potential for within-semester changes in students' implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs, these beliefs tend to remain relatively stable over time (Robins & Pals, 2002;Snyder et al, 2018). However, students may grow to view effort as more critical to their academic success compared to ability or intelligence (Snyder et al, 2018).…”

“…Although there is potential for within-semester changes in students' implicit beliefs about intelligence and effort beliefs, these beliefs tend to remain relatively stable over time (Robins & Pals, 2002;Snyder et al, 2018). However, students may grow to view effort as more critical to their academic success compared to ability or intelligence (Snyder et al, 2018). Students who believe academic success is based on hard work and effort are more likely to see academic challenges (e.g., struggling with engineering coursework) as reasons to persist, while students who believe intelligence is intrinsic, or a fixed trait, are more likely to question their ability to succeed (Aronson, 2002).…”