The increasingly important role of science competency beliefs for science learning in girls

Abstract

The number of women studying STEM careers and pursuing graduate degrees has not changed in the last decade (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2015; Science & Engineering Degree Attainment: 2004-2014. Most prior research to explain this problem has focused on the topics of identity, access, pedagogy, and choice (Brotman & Moore, 2008; Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45, 971-1002). Additional research is needed on how internal and external factors interact with one another to demotivate girls and young women from pursuing science careers. Here, we show how girls' competency beliefs are an essential foundation for science content learning during middle school and how these effects of competency beliefs are mediated by in and out-of-school factors. We recruited over 2,900 6th and 8th grade students from two different regions in the United States. At two different time points, students completed surveys asking about their stance toward science such as competency beliefs in science, willingness to engage in argumentation, and choice preferences toward optional science experiences. We also collected a reasoning ability measure, and pre-and post-tests on science content knowledge. Moreover, students also reported on their cognitive behavioral engagement during a sampled science class on two separate occasions. Multiple regression and mediation analyses show that as boys grow older, their willingness to engage in argumentation and to participate in science experiences suppresses the role of competency beliefs on their learning science content. By contrast, as girls grew older, they showed an increasing need to have high competency beliefs to achieve strong content learning gains. Our results demonstrate that despite girls' willingness to participate in scientific argumentation and to take part in science experiences, they probably do not receive enough support in their environment to access the benefits of these experiences, and hence they have a stronger need to have high competency beliefs in order to achieve significant growth in science learning. #

Female students with A’s have similar physics self-efficacy as male students with C’s in introductory courses: A cause for alarm?

“…Our findings are similar to the validation of these rating scales in prior investigation [54]. In particular, this scale was used as opposed to "strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree" because students interpret these rating scales appropriately and because it reduces students' cognitive load, which is especially important for non-native speakers and for questions that ask raters to consider subtle differences in survey items [54]. The four-point scale also allows printing the scale next to each item so students do not need to search the instructions or map back to the initial scale as some surveys do, thereby further reducing potential errors in mapping or misremembering scale numbers.…”

“…We note that the scale for some of the self-efficacy questions was in the form of "NO!, no, yes, YES!" This response scale has been extensively validated in prior studies, including studies of self-efficacy [54]. Our findings are similar to the validation of these rating scales in prior investigation [54].…”

“…Unfortunately, several studies have shown that female students have significantly lower self-efficacy than male students in STEM-related domains [23,53,54] including in mathematics, engineering [14,24,55], and computer science [56,57]. In physics, female students report significantly lower self-efficacy than male students [58][59][60][61][62], even in interactive engagement courses [60] and even if female students had received prior physics instruction in high school [61].…”

“…This response scale has been extensively validated in prior studies, including studies of self-efficacy [54]. Our findings are similar to the validation of these rating scales in prior investigation [54]. In particular, this scale was used as opposed to "strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree" because students interpret these rating scales appropriately and because it reduces students' cognitive load, which is especially important for non-native speakers and for questions that ask raters to consider subtle differences in survey items [54].…”

“I'm just not that great at science”: Science self‐efficacy in arts and communication students

“…Ballen et al (2017) go as far as to describe the science classroom as a "chilly environment" (p. 1) for women and under-represented minority (URM) students (see also Ong et al, 2017). Beyond the clear structural inequities that underlie these patterns of representation, a number of researchers point to psychological factors-stereotype threat (Steele, 1997), misalignments of confidence and performance (Debacker & Nelson, 2000;Talsma et al, 2019;Vincent-Ruz & Schunn, 2017), science identity and self-concept (Robbins et al, 2004;Schinske, Perkins, Snyder, & Wyer, 2016;Trujillo & Tanner, 2014), and, of course, self-efficacy (Britner & Pajares, 2006;Chemers et al, 2011;Lindstrøm & Sharma, 2011)-that contribute to the challenges for these underserved groups.…”