Poster #5 - Promoting an Agentic Engagement Mind-Set: Preliminary Results for an Intervention With College Students

• In Event: 77.059 - MTCC Tuesday Poster Session 18
  In Poster Session: 77.059-1 - Exploring Motivational Constructs in Authentic Academic Settings

Abstract

Agentic engagement (AE) describes students’ proactive attempts to influence activities so that they better support their motivation and learning. The current investigation provided the first test of an intervention to promote students’ agentic engagement mindset. A preliminary experiment compared the effect of an AE intervention to an inactive control and alternative study skills intervention on students’ mindset beliefs, engagement, motivation, and perceived autonomy support, and course intentions among 163 college students taking a psychology class. Regression-based mediation analyses suggested that students who received the AE intervention reported more malleable end-of-semester engagement perspectives. In turn, this mindset predicted greater in-class engagement, need satisfaction, interest in psychology, perceived teacher autonomy support, and intentions to take more psychology coursework.

Authors

• Erika Alisha Patall, University of Southern California

• Alana Kennedy, University of Southern California

• Nicole Marissa Yates, University of Southern California

• Joseph Vallin, University of Southern California