Relationships Between the Motivational Climate in a Computer Science Course and Students’ Attainment Value

• In Event: The Interplay of Motivation and Identity: Perspectives on How It Matters for Students and Teachers

Abstract

Students’ perceptions of the motivational climate in introductory undergraduate engineering courses have been shown to predict their engineering attainment value (a.k.a., domain identification, Osborne & Jones, 2011; Jones et al., 2014, 2016). Attainment value is the value that individuals place on activities that are central to their personal identity (Eccles, 2009) and, as part of Situated Expectancy-Value theory, Eccles and Wigfield (2020) noted that relationships between attainment value and other variables are understudied. Understanding these associations is important because attainment value can affect students’ choices, engagement, goals, and outcomes within a domain (Jones et al., 2014, 2016).
The purpose of the present study was to examine how students’ perceptions of the motivational climate in a computer science (CS) course were related to their CS attainment value. Because the field of CS has struggled with attracting and retaining women, we investigated these relationships by gender to identify any possible differences between women and men. We also examined relationships between students’ motivational climate perceptions and their course effort, overall course rating, and course grade because these variables are related to one another (e.g., Jones et al., 2022; Li et al., 2022) and could add context to the primary findings.
Participants were enrolled in a lower-level CS course at a large university in the Southeastern United States. Of the 426 students in the course, about half (n = 212; 54 females, 155 males, 3 other) were included in the study. We measured students’ perceptions of the motivational climate in the course, CS attainment value, course effort, and course rating (see Table 1). We used students’ final course grade as another outcome variable.
Using R software, we conducted clustering analysis using the five MUSIC variables (i.e., eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, and Caring) as the measure of motivational climate, similar to other studies (Jones et al., 2022). We examined k-means clustering analyses of three, four, five, and six cluster solutions to determine if they offered any interpretable solution. The four-cluster solution shown in Figure 1 was the most theoretically sound and reasonable in terms of the gap statistics. Overall, the cluster results indicated that students who rated the motivational climate lower tended to rate all five of the MUSIC components lower than students in the other clusters. However, compared to students in Clusters A and B, students in Clusters C and D tended to perceive the course to be less Empowering and Interesting relative to their perceptions of Usefulness, Success, and Interest.
Figure 2 shows that the clusters aligned with students’ levels of CS attainment value as predicted: Students with higher motivational climate perceptions reported higher levels of attainment value. The patterns of means for women and men were similar for course effort, course rating, and final course grade.
Because students’ perceptions of the motivational climate within a CS course are related to their identification with CS (attainment value), it may be possible to develop interventions that increase students’ personal identity with CS by supporting one or more components of the motivational climate.

Authors

• Brett D. Jones, Virginia Tech

• Inyoung Kim, Virginia Tech

• Hande Fenerci, Virginia Tech

• Margaret Ellis, Virginia Tech