Why Is Writing About Value So Powerful?

• In Event: The Roles of Value and Interest in Promoting Learning

Abstract

In several field experiments, we have tested a simple curricular intervention for increasing performance and engagement in biology courses for at-risk high school and college students. By at-risk, we mean students at risk of becoming disengaged, either because they have a history of poor performance, low interest, or because they are underrepresented students. The utility value intervention (UVI), in which students write about the personal relevance of course material, helps students discover connections between course topics and their lives, in their own terms. Discovering these connections helps students appreciate the value of their course work, leading to a deeper level of engagement with the course work that, in turn, improves performance. This intervention is based in Eccles’ Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles et al, 2009). We found that the UVI was effective in promoting interest and performance for students with low performance expectations in high school biology (Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009) and for students with a history of low performance in introductory psychology courses in college (Hulleman et al, 2010). Results from our most recent study, a double-blind randomized field experiment conducted over four semesters in an introductory college biology course (N = 1040) show that the UVI was successful in reducing the achievement gap for underrepresent minority students (URM) by 40% and for first-generation URM students by 61% (Harackiewicz, Canning, Tibbetts, Priniski, & Hyde, 2015), making it particularly powerful for the doubly disadvantaged group of FG-URM students. The UVI has been well validated in both the laboratory and the actual field, and thus holds great promise for implementation across a wide range of science courses.

However, less is known about how the intervention works. Is writing about value cognitively engaging and does it promote a higher level of involvement and deep processing? Does it help students connect course material to important goals and personal values, and work through meaning, value and interest processes? In our most recent work, we have attempted to identify demographic, background, and motivational variables that may account for differential effects of the UVI, and our findings offer insight into mechanisms. We found that a UVI implemented in an introductory biology course was effective for FG-URM students (a demographic category), for students with low prior GPAs (an academic background category), and for students with high helping motives (a motivational category). We have coded students’ essays for a number of features: use of personal pronouns, essay length, social content, cognitive processes and found evidence supporting several mechanisms, most notably, cognitive engagement, as indexed by essay length, and writing with cognitive process words indicative of insight and deeper understanding. Our mediation and content analyses provide some insight into how the UVI may help to promote performance – by increasing engagement in the writing assignments; by including more personal and social content; and by encouraging cognitive involvement with course material, but more work is needed to understand when, how, and why the UVI works to promote interest and performance.

Authors

• Judith Harackiewicz, University of Wisconsin

• Elizabeth Ann Canning, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Stacy J. Priniski, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Yoi Tibbetts, University of Wisconsin