Removing Barriers to Success in Mathematics: An Integrative Expectancy-Value Intervention

EHR核心研究（ECR）计划强调基础STEM教育研究，产生该领域的基础知识。 投资是在关键领域是必不可少的，广泛的和持久的：干学习和干学习环境，扩大参与干，干劳动力发展。本研究将先前关于STEM学习和STEM学习环境的理论和实证工作扩展到社区大学发展数学课堂。 发展性数学课程是学生为工作做好充分准备的主要学术守门人，但社区大学的许多学生即使通过发展性课程进行补救，也无法达到大学准备的数学水平。 为了满足这一需求，本研究将探讨一个简短但有前途的心理干预的影响，旨在提高学生的动机和课程学习成果的发展数学。研究人员假设，这种干预将导致增加对数学的兴趣和表现的看法，这反过来又会，在短期内，导致在社区大学发展数学课程，是本研究的重点注册的学生的表现（提高课程通过率）和持久性（降低辍学率）的改善。最终，研究人员预计，本研究产生的基础证据将为从业者提供必要的信息，以优化基于个体差异和背景因素的干预措施（实际意义），并有可能有助于发展关于谁和为什么干预措施有效的理论（理论上很重要）。具体来说，这项研究旨在提供证据的功效和效果的期望值干预，结合成长的心态和效用价值的组成部分。 弗吉尼亚大学和瓦伦西亚社区学院（位于佛罗里达的橙子县和奥西奥拉县）的研究人员将合作进行一系列试验，其中包括三种治疗条件（仅增长心态，仅效用价值，结合增长心态和效用价值）和“一切照旧”的对照条件。干预试验将在一个学期内进行，后续行动来自管理数据集。在为期三年的干预周期结束时，九个独立的学生群体（n= 5，600）将参加这项研究，嵌套在瓦伦西亚社区学院的班级（n=280），嵌套在教师（n=40）中。特别感兴趣的是个人和上下文（教室和教师）水平的因素，可能会缓和或调解的期望值干预的效果。 因此，研究参与者将被随机分配到课堂水平的治疗条件，使研究人员能够探索干预是否在某些教室和/或某些教师中比其他教师更有效。 本研究将透过学生动机问卷、教师问卷及有待发展的工具，调查学生对数学课堂学习情境的看法及教师对数学学与教的看法，以搜集初步数据，探讨中介及调节因素。学生的人口统计和表现数据将从行政记录中获得;此外，教师将被要求提供课堂水平的学生表现数据。补充定性数据将收集从学生和教师通过单独的学生和教师焦点小组，个别学生访谈，并大声思考的协议，阐述了学生的动机问卷。这些数据的分析可能有潜在的重要影响，明确考虑的背景下，发展理论的心理干预教育的好处。此外，该研究旨在使研究人员能够在多个队列中复制干预措施（测试一致性），并纵向跟踪学生（探索对更远端结果的潜在干预效果，例如，坚持完成学位）。 研究人员假设，期望值干预将是资源效率和实际有用的-能够提供给学生的在线学习模块，适合在大型教室和机构的广泛传播。 研究完成后，将向其他研究者提供（去识别）研究数据。

The EHR Core Research (ECR) program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This study extends prior theoretical and empirical work on STEM learning and STEM learning environments into community college classrooms in developmental mathematics. Developmental math courses are a major academic gatekeeper for adequately preparing students for the work force, yet many students in community colleges fail to reach college-ready math proficiency even with remediation through developmental curricula. To address this need, this study will examine the impact of a brief but promising psychological intervention designed to enhance student motivation and course learning outcomes in developmental math. The investigators hypothesize that this intervention will lead to increased perceptions of interest and performance in mathematics, which in turn will, in the short term, result in improved performance (increased course pass rates) and persistence (decreased dropout rates) of students enrolled in the community college developmental math courses that are the focus of this study. Ultimately, the investigators anticipate the foundational evidence generated by this study will provide practitioners with the information necessary to optimize interventions based on individual differences and contextual factors (practical import), and have the potential to contribute to the development of theories about for whom and why interventions work (theoretical important).Specifically, this study is designed to provide evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of an expectancy value intervention, combining growth mindset and utility value components. Researchers at the University of Virginia and Valencia Community College (located in Orange and Osceola Counties, Florida) will collaborate on a series of trials of one of three treatment conditions (growth mindset only, utility value only, combined growth mindset and utility value) and a 'business as usual' control condition. Intervention trials will be contained within a semester, with follow-ups coming from administrative data sets. At the end of the three-year intervention cycle nine separate cohorts of students (n=5,600) will have participated in the study, nested within class sections (n=280), nested within teachers (n=40) at Valencia Community College. Of particular interest are the individual- and contextual- (classroom and teacher) level factors which might moderate or mediate the effects of the expectancy-value intervention. Accordingly, study participants will be randomly assigned to treatment conditions at the classroom level, enabling the investigators to explore whether the intervention is more effective in some classrooms and/or with some teachers than others. Primary data to explore mediating and moderating factors will be collected via administration of a self-report student motivation questionnaire, a teacher questionnaire, and to-be-developed instruments to survey students' perceptions of the classroom learning context and teachers' beliefs about learning and teaching practices in mathematics. Student demographic and performance data will be obtained from administrative records; additionally, instructors will be asked to provide classroom-level student performance data. Complementary qualitative data will be collected from students and teachers via separate student and teacher focus groups, individual student interviews, and think-aloud protocols elaborating on the student motivation questionnaire. Analyses of these data may have potentially important implications regarding the benefits of explicit consideration of contexts when developing theories of psychological interventions in education. Additionally, the study is designed to enable investigators to replicate the intervention across multiple cohorts (testing for consistency), and to follow students longitudinally (exploring potential intervention effects on more distal outcomes, e.g., persistence towards degree completion). The investigators hypothesize the expectancy-value intervention will be both resource-efficient and practically useful - capable of being delivered to students as online learning modules amenable to widespread dissemination across large sets of classrooms and institutions. Following completion of the study, (de-identified) study data will be made available to other researchers.