Examining Trajectories of Situated Expectancy-Value Constructs in a College Calculus Course

• In Event: Students' Expectancies and Values After the Transition to Higher Education: A Situated Perspective

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework
Research focusing on what motivates students to learn suggests that students’ beliefs about their capabilities, their perceptions of value for learning, and their perceptions of the negative consequences of learning all play large roles in shaping behavior and performance in academics (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). However, most existing research focuses on motivation, measured as a stable trait, predicting academic outcomes over time. Motivation is not a stable trait; the experiences students have throughout a course shape their motivational beliefs from day-to-day and week-to-week (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020; Hilpert & Marchand, 2018; Moeller et al., 2021). Although prior studies have examined short-term motivational trajectories (Benden & Lauermann, 2020; Kosovich et al., 2017), there is little evidence on potential predictors of trajectories. Thus, the goal of the present study was to address these topics by exploring the trajectories of change in students’ motivational beliefs during one semester of a calculus course as well as how students’ anticipated motivational beliefs influenced trajectories of change.

Methods
Participants for this study (N = 429; 37% female; 62% white) were enrolled in five sections of a college calculus course. Students completed a pre-survey of their anticipated motivational beliefs (i.e., expectancies, task values, costs). Then, students completed weekly diary surveys that assessed their experienced motivational beliefs for 11 consecutive weeks (i.e., perceived competence, importance value, interest value, costs). Example items are included in Table 1. For the main analyses, we fit a conditional latent growth model using full information maximum likelihood (FIML) to handle missing data. Seven separate models were examined for each diary variable: perceived competence, importance value, interest value, task effort (TE) cost, outside effort (OE) cost, loss of valued alternatives (LOVA) cost, and emotional (EM) cost.
Results
All results are reported in Table 2. Key findings from the analyses revealed that those who reported high anticipated expectancies had comparatively slower declines of experiences in competence as well as slower increases in experienced OE, LOVA, and EM costs. In contrast, those with high anticipated value had faster increases in TE, OE, LOVA, and EM cost. Anticipated expectancies were negatively associated with initial levels of experienced TE cost, whereas anticipated value was negatively associated with initial levels of experienced OE and LOVA cost. Finally, those with high expectancies and high anticipated value had higher initial levels of experiences in importance.

Discussion
Results support the importance of understanding short-term SEVT construct trajectories. In particular, results suggested that high anticipated expectancies may act as a buffer against cost increases throughout the semester, but high anticipated value may increase the rate at which cost increases. Perhaps costs increase faster for those with high value due to the sense of importance of the course and the feeling that they must give up more to do well. Further, high expectancies may also act as a buffer against declines in experiences of perceived competence throughout the semester suggesting a need to explore how expectancies develop for students before entering college.

Authors

• Patrick Neil Beymer, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Emily Quinn Rosenzweig, University of Georgia