If “We” Can Do It, Then So Can “I”: Identity-Based Motivation and Gender in the Classroom

• In Event: “Wise” Educational Interventions: How Understanding Stereotyped Students’ Subjective Construals Can Improve Motivation and Performance

Abstract

Background: In schools composed of primarily minority and/or low income students, a gender gap in academic achievement outcomes currently exists in which girls are outperforming boys. Based on the theory of identity-based motivation, the present research suggests that one potential explanation for this gap is that school is a context in which effort feels more worthwhile for girls and less worthwhile for boys. When school tasks feel difficult, students will increase their effort only when success in school feels identity-congruent. A domain feels identity-congruent when one perceives that ‘people like me’ engage and achieve in that given domain. Importantly, what feels identity-congruent is context-dependent. This perspective suggests that if boys were cued to think of achievement success as identity congruent, then the gender gap should diminish. The goal of this study is to determine whether cuing male and female adolescents to perceive academic success as gender-congruent will affect academic effort and future achievement-related goals.

Methods, Sample, & Hypothesis: To test this hypothesis, the degree to which achievement success felt identity-congruent was experimentally manipulated for male and female adolescents. The sample includes 146 eighth-grade students attending an African-American majority, Detroit-area middle school. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. In the female success condition, students were presented with the high school graduation rates of Michigan men and women, indicating higher female graduation rates. In the male success condition, students were given the median income rates of Michigan men and women, indicating higher earning potential among men. In addition to these treatment conditions, there were two control groups, one presenting non-gendered high school graduation rates, and another illustrating non-gendered information on median income in Michigan. Effects of these identity congruence primes were found on short term academic possible selves, effort on an academic task, and optimism about future success.

Results: Responses indicated that being presented with information that connects one’s gender to achievement success resulted in 1) more school-relevant goals coming to mind when students were asked to envision themselves next year, 2) increased optimism about future educational attainment and economic outcomes (finishing more years of schooling and earning more) and 3) among boys, increased effort on an academic math task.

Implications: Overall, we found preliminary evidence that we can frame gender in ways that are more congruent with achievement and bolster effort at school, especially for boys. We can change what comes to mind when students think about their group memberships with subtle messages that reframe the meaning of these identities. This is important for how we can help motivate students at school and offers strategies for intervention approaches to engage student’s social identities in ways that can be helpful. Believing that achievement is identity-congruent is one important way that adolescents can feel more connected to future academic possible selves.

Authors

• Kristen C. Elmore, University of Michigan

• Daphna Oyserman, University of Michigan