Although in basic agreement with Murayama and Jach's call for greater attention to the black boxes underlying motivated behavior, we provide examples of our published suggestions regarding how subjective task value (and ability self-concepts) "gets into people's knowledge structures." We suggest additional mental computational processes to investigate and call for a developmental and situated individual differences approach to this work.

BACKGROUND:Student ratings are commonly used to evaluate classroom processes. Research suggests that these ratings are not solely based on objective situational characteristics but also reflect rater characteristics. Although research has been conducted in K-12 settings, little is known about how person-specific and situation-specific factors affect student ratings in higher education. AIMS:This study investigates to what extent students' ratings on instructional quality (INQ) vary in response to various data collection across teaching situations. In this way, we also investigate the role of motivational beliefs in these ratings. SAMPLE:The study uses data from 1,745 undergraduates (26.5% self-identified as male students) from a university in California, U.S.A. METHODS:We employed single trait-multistate models (STMS) to decompose INQ variance (classroom management, student support, cognitive activation). We estimate the consistency and situation specificity of ratings across courses, time, and course type. Also, we estimated correlations between motivational beliefs and the consistent component across ratings, i.e., the person effect. RESULTS:High consistency in student ratings of INQ was found within the same course over time. This consistency was lower when INQ was rated across different courses. The consistency was higher in courses that students perceived as difficult than to courses that were perceived as important. Students who reported higher expectancies for success and interest value in these courses also rated INQ more positive across teaching situations. CONCLUSIONS:Our findings suggest that student ratings of INQ are situated and shaped by course characteristics but also rater characteristics. Motivational beliefs contribute uniquely to students' INQ ratings beyond situational characteristics.

BACKGROUND:Social support is assumed to play a key role in motivation at university, particularly for disadvantaged students, such as first-generation and community college transfer students. However, longitudinal research investigating reciprocal associations between social support and motivation is lacking. AIMS:We examined such associations between confidence in getting support from faculty and peers and students' expectancies and subjective task values in their most difficult and most important course. SAMPLE:Data stemmed from two cohorts of undergraduate students (n = 320/417 in Fall 2019/2020) at a diverse Southern Californian university. METHODS:Students reported on their confidence in getting support and their expectancies and subjective task values at the beginning, in the middle and (only for motivation) at the end of the academic term. RESULTS:Results indicated no differences in confidence in getting support based on university generation or transfer student status. Cross-lagged panel models provided some evidence for reciprocal associations between students' confidence in getting support and their expectancies and subjective task values. Findings were similar across the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 cohorts, providing support for the generalizability across in-person vs. remote learning settings. Longitudinal associations tended to be stronger for first-generation and transfer students. CONCLUSIONS:Future research should, therefore, examine whether university programmes targeting social support are especially effective for disadvantaged students.

The present study investigated the longitudinal direct and indirect relations between mothers' and fathers' math ability self-concept, their child-specific math performance expectations and encouragement of math and science-related activities at home, and girls' and boys' math ability self-concept. Structural equation models were performed with longitudinal data from three waves of the Childhood and Beyond Study (CAB). The final sample consisted of 517 children and their mothers and fathers. The majority of children attended 2nd (26.1%), 3rd (25.5%) or 5th (40.4%) grade at first measurement point. Our results suggest that mothers and fathers with higher math ability self-concepts had higher expectations of their sons and encouraged their sons more, but not their daughters. Fathers' math ability self-concept was indirectly related to the self-concept of their sons and this association was mediated by performance expectations. Furthermore, both boys and girls profited from their fathers' expectations and girls benefitted from their fathers' encouragement of math and science-related activities at home. In contrast, we found no effects from mothers' beliefs and behaviors on child's math ability self-concept. The findings underscore the relevance of fathers' educational participation in the development of the math self-concept of ability of their children.

Concerns with diversifying and expanding the STEM workforce have elicited extensive efforts to increase women's adherence to a "no leak pipeline" to match that of men. However, is such a trajectory optimal for boosting women's STEM career attainment? If so, among which types of STEM occupations? Studies often suggested that women are underrepresented in the pipeline of "white-collar", mathematical, engineering, physical, and computer science (MEPCS) occupations, but to what extent does this conclusion hold true among other types of STEM careers? To answer these questions, we plotted men's and women's STEM career trajectories from age 13 to 25 using a U.S. national longitudinal sample and categorized occupations by domain-specific knowledge (i. e., non-STEM, MEPCS, or LEHMS [life, ecological, health and medical sciences]) and by educational requirement (i.e., "blue-collar" non-STEM, "blue-collar" STEM, "white-collar" non-STEM, or "white-collar" STEM). We found gender similarities in STEM attrition, gender differences in STEM entry, and gender differences in STEM career attainment trajectories. For example, STEM workers rarely took a "no leak pipeline", except women in LEHMS occupations. Moreover, tracking the size of STEM workforce longitudinally, we found that though small, women's MEPCS workforce expanded to nearly twice its size as participants grew from age 13 to 25; in contrast, the LEHMS workforce shrank to less than a third of its size among both men and women. Our results specify aspects in which STEM trajectories of men and women differ across various types of STEM occupations and thus provide an updated understanding of gendered STEM career trajectories.

ABSTRACTIntroductionIndividuals' math value beliefs are theorized to influence who persists in STEM. However, the existing findings on gender differences in adolescents' math value beliefs are inconsistent. The goal of this study was to use three existing datasets to help clarify when gender differences emerge for high school adolescents and for whom (i.e., adolescents across historical time, grade level, and race/ethnicity). Specifically, we examined the extent to which gender differences in adolescents' math value beliefs (i.e., interest, utility, and attainment) replicated (1) across three datasets spanning the 1990s to 2010s, (2) from 9th–12th grade, and (3) within each of the four largest U.S. racial/ethnic groups (i.e., Asian, Black, Latine, and White adolescents).MethodsWe tested these aims with three existing longitudinal U.S. datasets: the California Achievement Motivation Project (CAMP) (n = 8855), the Childhood and Beyond Study (CAB) (n = 582), and the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) (n = 21,000). Students were in high school (9th–12th grade) and half were girls (49%–53%). All three datasets included measures with the same or similar math value belief items, making conceptual replication possible.Results and ConclusionsOverall, we did not find strong evidence for meaningful gender differences in adolescents' math value beliefs overall. We did find meaningful gender differences in the oldest data set (CAB). When examined within each racial/ethnic group, we found no evidence of gender differences in math value beliefs among Black or Latine adolescents, but some differences among Asian and White adolescents. The findings align with the gender similarities hypothesis, suggesting adolescent girls and boys had similar math value beliefs.

A perceived fit between personal values and what a career offers is critical for college students pursuing and persisting in that career. We, therefore, investigated the career values of engineering undergraduates through language in two different studies. Study 1 (N = 35) examined students’ written post-graduation plans for agentic and communal career value themes. Agentic value themes included career, personal development, and financial gains. Communal value themes included helping others and being family-oriented. Drawing on Study 1 themes, Study 2 (N = 918) examined the association of achievement-related and interpersonal word categories in written narratives to surveyed career values. Results from Study 2 showed that students’ language use in the discussion of their careers was associated with surveyed career values. Both studies focused on the nuances of engineering students holding multiple career values. Implications suggest ways in which we can promote the subtleties of career fit through language usage.

The present study explored a set of plausible directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of constructs involved in Situated Expectancy–Value Theory (SEVT) using cross-sectional data. To do so, three datasets ( n = 1,540; 1,867; and 103) with expectancy, values, and prior achievement constructs were used. First, networks showed a consistent magnitude of associations between SEVT constructs across datasets. Expectancy was associated with achievement ( r = .21; 0.29; 0.37) and intrinsic value ( r = .35; 0.68; 0.60); intrinsic value was associated with attainment value ( r = .31; 0.79; 0.61). We reason through a set of plausible DAGs, or hypothesized directional models. Across datasets, DAGs revealed that prior achievement relates to expectancy, intrinsic value relates to expectancy, and utility relates to attainment value. This study highlights that DAGs can be used as a step to help triangulate, in conjunction with experimental and longitudinal work, on the underlying processes shaping relations between constructs.

In this article, we apply complex dynamic systems theory to the concept of student engagement, to conceptualize how engaging momentarily in schools and colleges occurs as a complex system of motivation, emotion, cognition, and physical action, operating across seconds and minutes. We describe momentary student engagement as being comprised parts and their interdependencies and suggest how the parts of momentary student engagement can converge through nonlinear circular causality into an attractor state that is maintained across momentary time. We conclude by conceptualizing momentary student engagement as an action sequence that begins with a trigger and ends with disengagement. This new conceptualization is proposed as a starting place for new empirical approaches and theoretical developments. Public Significance Statement This article presents a psychological model of how students engage in learning across a timescale of seconds to minutes. The perspective in the article is premised on complex dynamic systems theory, which was developed originally in mathematics and is applied to the study of how humans think and behave.

INTRODUCTION:Parents' science support and adolescents' motivational beliefs are associated with adolescents' expectations for their future occupations; however, these associations have been mostly investigated among White, middle-class samples. Framed by situated expectancy-value theory, the current study investigated: (1) the associations between parents' science support in 9th grade and Latine adolescents' science intrinsic value, utility value, and STEM career expectations in 11th grade, and (2) whether these indicators and the relations among them differed by adolescents' gender and parents' education. METHODS:Study participants included Latine adolescents (n = 3060; Mage = 14.4 years old; 49% female) in the United States from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. RESULTS:Analyses revealed a significant, positive association between parents' science support and Latine adolescents' science utility value. Additionally, there was a significant, positive association between parents' science support and Latinas' science intrinsic value, but not for Latinos' science intrinsic value. Latine adolescents' science utility value, but not their science intrinsic value, predicted their concurrent STEM career expectations. Though there were no significant mean level differences in adolescents' science utility value or parents' science support based on adolescents' gender, the measure of adolescents' science intrinsic value varied across girls and boys. Finally, adolescents whose parents had a college degree received greater science support from parents compared to adolescents whose parents had less education than a college degree. CONCLUSION:Findings suggest parents' science support and adolescents' intrinsic and utility values have potential associations with Latine adolescents' STEM career expectations near the end of high school.

Many researchers have studied the effects of ability grouping on students' academic self-concept due to its critical importance for students' educational choices and trajectories. However, the available evidence is almost exclusively correlational, the results are inconsistent, and it is thus unclear how ability grouping may influence students' academic self-concept. This study applies causal inference methods to understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of math ability grouping on students' math self-concept. Using a quasi-experimental design and following students who transitioned from elementary school (Grade 6) to middle school (Grade 7) with or without ability grouping (N = 1,660, 90% White, 53% female), we investigated whether between-class math ability grouping impacts seventh graders' formation of their math self-concept through comparative processes (social and dimensional comparisons) and objective performance information. Through propensity score weighting and average marginal effect estimation, we found that high-grouped students reported lower math self-concepts than high-achieving ungrouped students, and low-grouped students reported higher math self-concepts than low-achieving ungrouped students at the end of Grade 7. Average-achieving students attending schools with a between-class grouping policy showed stronger dimensional comparison effects than their ungrouped counterparts. The effects of prior math performance on math self-concept were nonsignificant for high- and low-achieving students, regardless of their grouping status. These findings advance our understanding of how pervasive school practices, such as ability grouping, shape students' self-relevant motivational beliefs.

The changes in adolescents' math motivational beliefs (i.e., expectancies for success, interest, and utility value) across Grades 9-11 and the associations between these changes and adolescents' experiences with socializers (i.e., perceived teacher unfairness and parent-adolescent discussions) were examined within each of the four largest racial/ethnic groups in the United States using the High School Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative data set (n = 19,010; 50% female; 9% Asian; 11% Black; 18% Latine; 62% White; M-age = 14.53 in Grade 9). Cross-tabulation analyses suggested that similar developmental trends emerged within each racial/ethnic group (which were tested separately). Many adolescents maintained their high or low expectancies, interest, and utility values across Grades 9-11. Some patterns varied by belief; for example, several adolescents switched from high to low interest by Grade 11, whereas several adolescents switched from low to high utility value. Parent-adolescent discussions predicted positive changes among Asian and Latine adolescents, whereas perceived teacher unfairness predicted negative changes among Black adolescents. The findings from the present study highlight the diverse developmental trends in adolescents' motivational beliefs and the potential role of socializers as sources of strength or challenge in their motivational belief development.

In this commentary, I focus on an international, collaborative, longitudinal study of the development of elementary school students’ math motivation and performance across six countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Portugal, and Serbia. The investigators designed motivational questionnaires to assess student motivational beliefs defined quite broadly, teacher and student questionnaires to assess teacher beliefs and practices, and family questionnaires to assess parents’ beliefs and practices as well as perceptions of their children and then tested to reliability and validity of these measures across all six countries so that they could investigate both development within countries and generalizability across countries. I focus my comparative comments on the following themes that cut across the various studies: the gender, national and SES differences, the impact of teacher beliefs and practices, the impact of parents, and the testing hypotheses derived from various social cognitive motivational systems.

Community colleges provide broad access to a college degree due to their less expensive tuition, greater course time offerings, and more open admission policies compared to four-year universities as reported (Juszkiewicz, 2015). These institutions have great potential to diversify who chooses STEM, such as engineering. Such diverse representation is important, because students from different backgrounds can contribute new perspectives that foster creative and innovative approaches to solving problems. However, approximately 40% of the students who enter community college in the U.S. leave before graduation (Xu & Jaggars, 2011). Harnessing the power of social media to reduce attrition, we tested a pilot intervention in which community college students in engineering courses completed a reflection exercise after watching YouTube videos of former engineering students from similar backgrounds who successfully transferred to a four-year college. Quasi-experimental analyses ( N = 537) show that students in the intervention received higher engineering course grades and had greater odds of enrolling in an engineering course in the subsequent term compared to those who were not in the intervention. Additionally, we find support for the hypothesis that the intervention has larger benefits for women. Results suggest that hearing from other students about their engineering experience can be a useful tool for improving community college students’ choices and performance.

To address the seven guiding questions posed for authors of articles in this special issue, we begin by discussing the development (in the late 1970s-early 1980s) of Eccles' expectancy-value theory of achievement choice (EEVT), a theory developed to explain the cultural phenomenon of why girls were less likely to participate in STEM courses and careers. We then discuss how we tested key predictions from the theory, notably how expectancies and values relate to achievement choices and performance and how socialization practices at home and in school influence them. Next, we discuss three main refinements: addressing developmental aspects of the theory, refining construct definitions, and renaming the theory situated expectancy value theory. We discuss reasons for that change, and their implications. To illustrate the theory's practicality, we discuss intervention projects based in the model, and what next steps should be in SEVT-based intervention research. We close with suggestions for future research, emphasizing attaining consensus on how to measure the central constructs, expanding the model to capture better motivation of diverse groups, and the challenges of testing the increasingly complex predictions stemming from the model. Throughout the manuscript, we make suggestions for early career researchers to provide guidance for their own development of theories.

Entering college, students are required to adjust to a new academic and social environment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social interactions with peers and faculty were limited to online settings and access to campus resources was restricted. Hence, students who entered college in fall 2020 began their freshman year under particularly challenging circumstances. We used data from two freshman cohorts, who started college either before or during the pandemic. We investigated to what extent mid-quarter academic and social adjustment (i.e., ability beliefs and confidence in getting support) predicted end-of-quarter performance, psychological distress, and satisfaction of freshman students. Results showed that students who started college during the pandemic were less confident they could get support by peers in the middle of their first quarter. Furthermore, students from the second cohort reported higher psychological distress and lower satisfaction with their adjustment at the end of their first quarter. Results showed that ability beliefs played an important role for end-of-quarter performance, whereas confidence in getting support was more relevant for psychological well-being outcomes in both cohorts.

The current study used survey data from 786 African American mother-adolescent (M = 12.29 years; 48% female) dyads to examine profiles of 7th-grade parental educational involvement and their associations with adolescents' 11th-grade academic performance, academic self-concept, and educational aspirations. Using latent profile analyses, four patterns emerged: (a) Low Involvers; (b) Helpers, Low Providers; (c) Providers, Low Helpers; and (d) More Involved Helpers and Providers. The More Involved Helpers and Providers had adolescents with higher grades than the Helpers, Low Providers and the Low Involvers. The Providers, Low Helpers also had adolescents with higher educational aspirations than other profiles except for the More Involved Helpers and Providers. Findings suggest multiple pathways through which African American parents can enhance adolescents' academic outcomes.

Are motivated students less likely to express negative achievement emotions in math, and how do teachers impact such academic beliefs? Guided by the situated expectancy-value theory and the control-value theory, this study is interested in how teacher support influences students’ negative affect in math through students’ perception of teacher support and students’ interest value (teacher-to-student transmission between and within classes). Thus, associations were modeled at the individual and classroom levels to investigate cross-level interactions. Using data from 1,429 students in grades 7–12 (49% males, 67% Hispanic Americans, 15% Asian Americans, 18% other racial/ethnic groups), cross-level indirect effects suggested an association of teacher-reported support for collaboration and cognitive support with decreasing negative affect through students’ perception of teacher support and students’ interest value. These associations were supported within but not between classes.

This study synthesizes theories of achievement motivation to better understand the development of academic task values in high school students and their relation to college major selection. We utilize longitudinal structural equation modeling to understand how grades relate to task values, how task values across domains relate to one another over time, and how the system of task values relates to college major choice. In our sample of 1,279 high students from Michigan, we find evidence that task value for math negatively relates to task value for English and vice versa. We also find that task value for math and physical science positively relates to the math-intensiveness of selected college majors, whereas English and biology task value negatively relates to math-intensiveness of majors. Gender differences in college major selection are mediated by differences in task values. Our findings have implications for theories of achievement motivation and motivational interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).