Fostering Students' Value Beliefs for Mathematics With a Relevance Intervention in the Classroom

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

Abstract

Students’ interests for various subjects tend to decline across secondary school (e.g., Frenzel, Goetz, Pekrun, & Watt, 2010). Aiming to find ways to buffer this decline, researchers have developed targeted interventions based on expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983). Expectancy-value-theory differentiates between four types of reasons for students to engage in a specific task: intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and (low) cost. Focusing on the value component most malleable through external interventions, interventions try to increase the perceived utility value of the learning material (for an overview, see Harackiewicz, Tibbetts, Canning, & Hyde, 2014). However, through stimulating relevance, these interventions ultimately aim at developing students’ interest and promoting their engagement (cf., Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Relevance interventions can, therefore, yield insight into processes of interest development that are triggered through enhanced value.

The aims of our current research are two-fold. First, we tested whether students’ value beliefs can be promoted through relevance interventions in the classroom. To answer this question, we compared two relevance interventions and examined effects of these interventions on all four value components. Second, we investigated whether these relevance interventions actually fostered interest development. To this end, we examined students’ situational interest regarding homework during the period after the intervention.

Eighty-two ninth grade mathematics classes in Germany (N=1916 students) were randomly assigned to one of two intervention conditions or a waiting control condition. The intervention consisted of a 90 minute session on the relevance of mathematics for students’ future lives. In the quotations condition, students were asked to evaluate interview quotations on the relevance of mathematics. In the text condition, students were asked to write an essay about the relevance of mathematics to their lives. Using a 37-item scale tapping all four value components, students’ value beliefs for mathematics were assessed before and both six weeks and five months after the intervention. Additionally, students filled out a homework diary for four weeks after the intervention. Herein, students reported on their homework experience with respect to triggered and maintained situational interest.

Students in both intervention conditions reported significantly higher utility value at the posttest as well as at the follow-up in comparison to students in the control condition. Additionally, students in the quotations condition also reported higher attainment value at both time points and higher intrinsic value at the follow-up. With respect to students’ situational interest regarding their homework in the four weeks after the intervention, students in the text condition reported a higher level of triggered situational interest, whereas students in the quotations condition reported a higher level of maintained situational interest.

Our findings show that relatively short interventions in the classroom can be successful in promoting students’ value beliefs until five months after the intervention. The differentiation between multiple value aspects in expectancy-value theory is helpful in developing and evaluating interventions. Examining students’ interest development can shed further light on the mechanisms underlying intervention effects. Further analyses will examine how students’ value beliefs reported before and after the intervention are related to situational interest.

Authors

• Hanna Gaspard, University of Tübingen

• Anna-Lena Dicke, University of California - Irvine

• Barbara Flunger, University of Tübingen

• Brigitte Maria Brisson, Tuebingen University