Lisa B Limeri, Nathan T Carter, Franchesca Lyra, Joel Martin, Halle Mastronardo, Jay Patel, Erin L Dolan
{"title":"Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities: Mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs uniquely predict undergraduate educational outcomes.","authors":"Lisa B Limeri, Nathan T Carter, Franchesca Lyra, Joel Martin, Halle Mastronardo, Jay Patel, Erin L Dolan","doi":"10.1187/cbe.22-12-0250","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Students' beliefs about their abilities (called \"lay theories\") affect their motivations, behaviors, and academic success. Lay theories include beliefs about the potential to improve intelligence (mindset), who (i.e., everyone or only some people) has the potential to be excellent in a field (universality), and whether reaching excellence in a field requires raw intellectual talent (brilliance). Research demonstrates that each of these beliefs influences students' educational experiences and academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear whether they represent distinct latent constructs or are susceptible to the \"jangle fallacy\" (i.e., different names given to the same underlying construct). We conducted a multiphase, mixed-methods study to 1) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs represent conceptually and empirically discriminable concepts, and 2) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs contribute unique explanatory value for both psychosocial (e.g., sense of belonging) and academic outcomes (e.g., course grades). To address these questions, we developed and collected validity evidence for a new measure of science and math undergraduates' lay theories, called the Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities (ULTrA) survey. Factor analyses suggest that mindset, brilliance, and universality are distinct and empirically discriminable constructs. Structural Equation Models indicate that each lay theory contributes unique predictive value to relevant outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":56321,"journal":{"name":"Cbe-Life Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10756031/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cbe-Life Sciences Education","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-12-0250","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Students' beliefs about their abilities (called "lay theories") affect their motivations, behaviors, and academic success. Lay theories include beliefs about the potential to improve intelligence (mindset), who (i.e., everyone or only some people) has the potential to be excellent in a field (universality), and whether reaching excellence in a field requires raw intellectual talent (brilliance). Research demonstrates that each of these beliefs influences students' educational experiences and academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear whether they represent distinct latent constructs or are susceptible to the "jangle fallacy" (i.e., different names given to the same underlying construct). We conducted a multiphase, mixed-methods study to 1) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs represent conceptually and empirically discriminable concepts, and 2) evaluate whether mindset, universality, and brilliance beliefs contribute unique explanatory value for both psychosocial (e.g., sense of belonging) and academic outcomes (e.g., course grades). To address these questions, we developed and collected validity evidence for a new measure of science and math undergraduates' lay theories, called the Undergraduate Lay Theories of Abilities (ULTrA) survey. Factor analyses suggest that mindset, brilliance, and universality are distinct and empirically discriminable constructs. Structural Equation Models indicate that each lay theory contributes unique predictive value to relevant outcomes.
期刊介绍:
CBE—Life Sciences Education (LSE), a free, online quarterly journal, is published by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). The journal was launched in spring 2002 as Cell Biology Education—A Journal of Life Science Education. The ASCB changed the name of the journal in spring 2006 to better reflect the breadth of its readership and the scope of its submissions.
LSE publishes peer-reviewed articles on life science education at the K–12, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The ASCB believes that learning in biology encompasses diverse fields, including math, chemistry, physics, engineering, computer science, and the interdisciplinary intersections of biology with these fields. Within biology, LSE focuses on how students are introduced to the study of life sciences, as well as approaches in cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and proteomics.