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，以产生该领域的基础知识。在基本、广泛和持久的关键领域进行投资：STEM学习和STEM学习环境，扩大STEM的参与，以及STEM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发展数学的社区大学课堂。发展性数学课程是让学生为就业做好充分准备的主要学术看门人，然而，社区大学的许多学生即使通过发展性课程进行补救，也无法达到上大学的数学熟练程度。为了满足这一需求，本研究将考察一项简短但有希望的心理干预的影响，该干预旨在提高学生的动机和发展数学课程的学习结果。研究人员假设，这种干预将导致人们对数学兴趣和表现的认知增加，这反过来又会在短期内导致参加社区大学发展数学课程的学生的表现(增加课程通过率)和坚持不懈(减少辍学率)，这些课程是本研究的重点。最终，研究人员预计，这项研究产生的基础证据将为从业者提供基于个体差异和背景因素优化干预措施所需的信息(实际意义)，并有可能促进关于干预措施对谁以及为什么有效的理论的发展(理论上重要)。具体地说，本研究旨在结合增长心态和效用价值成分，提供预期价值干预措施的有效性和有效性的证据。弗吉尼亚大学和瓦伦西亚社区学院(位于佛罗里达州奥兰治县和奥西奥拉县)的研究人员将合作进行一系列试验，测试三种治疗条件(仅限增长心态、仅限效用价值、组合成长心态和效用价值)中的一种，以及“一切照常”的对照条件。干预试验将在一个学期内进行，后续研究将来自管理数据集。在为期三年的干预周期结束时，9个独立的学生队列(n=5600)将参与研究，嵌套在班级(n=280)中，嵌套在巴伦西亚社区学院的教师(n=40)中。特别令人感兴趣的是个人和背景(课堂和教师)层面的因素，这些因素可能会缓和或调解期望值干预的效果。因此，研究参与者将被随机分配到课堂水平的治疗条件下，使调查人员能够探索干预是否在一些教室和/或一些教师比其他人更有效。通过使用学生自我报告动机问卷、教师问卷和有待开发的工具来调查学生对课堂学习环境的感知和教师对数学学习和教学实践的信念，将收集到探索中介和调节因素的基本数据。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。学生和教师将通过单独的学生和教师焦点小组、个别学生访谈和详细阐述学生动机问卷的有声思考协议，从学生和教师那里收集补充的定性数据。对这些数据的分析可能具有潜在的重要意义，即在发展教育中的心理干预理论时，明确考虑背景的好处。此外，这项研究的目的是使研究人员能够在多个队列中重复干预(一致性测试)，并纵向跟踪学生(探索潜在的干预对更远端结果的影响，例如，对完成学位的坚持)。研究人员假设，期望值干预将既节省资源，又实用--能够以在线学习模块的形式提供给学生，适合在大型教室和机构中广泛传播。研究完成后，(未确认的)研究数据将提供给其他研究人员。

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.