Closing the Social Class Achievement Gap in Undergraduate Biology Courses With Values Affirmation Interventions

• In Event: 46.085 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 46.085-9 - Educational Attainment and the Social Class Divide: Sociopsychological Barriers to Equality and Justice

Abstract

Objective
We will discuss intervention research designed to improve performance and persistence for first-generation students who typically struggle in undergraduate biology courses. We will discuss the mechanisms through which values affirmation interventions may help first-generation college students achieve a greater sense of belonging in college courses, perform better, and continue in the field of biology.

Theoretical framework
Achievement gaps for underrepresented ethnic minority and low SES students are prevalent in American education, and it is critically important to develop interventions to close these gaps. Recently, a series of randomized field experiments has produced striking effects on student motivation and achievement. The values affirmation intervention, in which students reflect on important personal values, is a brief exercise integrated into classroom curriculum that has led to significant effects on academic performance (Cohen et al., 2006; Miyake et al., 2010). This social psychological intervention has proven to be particularly effective for minority students and for women in physics, but no prior research has attempted to close the gap for first-generation students, a population that accounts for nearly a fifth of college students. When first-generation students write about their most important values, they may bolster themselves against perceived identity threats, whether those threats are due to stereotypes about their group or a mismatch between personal and institutional norms. Indeed, recent research suggests that values-affirmation interventions promote a sense of social belonging or academic fit and this may be particularly effective for first-generation students who endorse more interdependent motives for attending college and who may experience a lower sense of academic belonging. Focusing on important values may help first-generation students cope with stress and uncertainty about their background, and promote more effective performance in classes.

Methods and results
We tested a values-affirmation intervention in a double-blind randomized experiment with 798 U.S. students (154 first-generation) in an introductory biology course for majors. The brief writing exercise was administered in laboratory sections of the course, early in the semester, and again in the 5th week of the course. For first-generation students, values affirmation significantly improved final course grades and retention in the second course in the biology sequence, as well as overall GPA for the semester. This brief intervention narrowed the achievement gap between first-generation and continuing generation students for course grades by 50% and increased retention in a critical gateway course by 20%. In our ongoing research, we are examining the mechanisms through which this intervention worked, focusing on the content of students’ writing.

Significance
Our results indicate that the values affirmation intervention can be scaled up to large enrollment science classes and can help first-generation students. However, we need to attend to how this intervention is implemented in specific social contexts to maximize its effectiveness. Moreover, we need to focus on the theoretical mechanisms that account for the efficacy of values affirmation with this population. Our results suggest that educators can expand the pipeline for first-generation students to continue studying in the biosciences with psychological interventions.

Authors

• Judith Harackiewicz, University of Wisconsin

• Yoi Tibbetts, University of Wisconsin

• Elizabeth Ann Canning, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Janet S. Hyde, University of Wisconsin - Madison