Expectancy-Value Theory and Gendered Academic and Occupational Choices

• In Event: Does Gender Still Matter in Student Motivation? How, Why, for What, and for Whom?

Abstract

Despite recent increases in the participation of women in advanced educational training and high status professional fields, women and men are still concentrated in different occupations and educational programs and women are still under-represented in fields associated with physical science, engineering and applied mathematics. Many factors, ranging from outright discrimination to the processes associated with gender-role socialization, contribute to these gendered patterns. In this talk, I will discuss the applicability of the Eccles Expectancy Value Model of Achievement-Related Task Choices for understanding the psychological processes influencing these gendered patterns and will present illustrative findings. My colleagues and I have studied the motivational and social factors influencing individuals’ allocation of effort, and activity choices, across various achievement-related and other life activities. Given our interest in gender, we have focused on the motivational factors that might underlie gendered educational and vocational decisions. We link achievement-related beliefs, outcomes, and goals to: interpretative systems like causal attributions and views of intelligence, inputs of socializers (e.g., parents, peers, teachers, and media), gender-role beliefs, larger cultural and SES processes, as well as to self-perceptions/self-concepts, individuals’ perceptions of various tasks/choices and both social and personal identities. However, it is our focus on subjective task values and on identities that make our approach most unique. I will elaborate these features in my talk.

I will also summarize our recent findings from two longitudinal studies – the Michigan Adolescent Life Transitions (MSALT) and the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context (MADIC) studies. In both of these studies, we have followed adolescents from the 7th grade until age 30. In both studies we have documented the association of early math self-concepts and values with high school course taking patterns, college major and occupational choices related to STEM fields. In both studies, gender differences in subjective task values explain more of the gender variance in educational and occupational choices, suggesting that the heavy emphasis on personal efficacy and confidence as the prime motivational mediator of gendered STEM-related choices is somewhat misguided, or at the very least, short sighted. Furthermore, our findings suggest that values associated with wanting to help other individuals and to work closely with others in collaborative work settings drive both women and men away from jobs in engineering, technology, and physical science. Such values also explain some of the gender differences in occupational choices because women are more likely to endorse these values than men. These findings suggest that interventions designed to recruit more females to these STEM fields need to address the stereotypes regarding these professions, making it clearer to high school students that engineers do work together on problems that directly benefit people’s lives. I will end with a brief discussion of the ways in which we need to provide better information to young people as they form their images of various occupations and as they form their judgments of the subjective task value of various course decisions while in secondary school.

Author

• Jacquelynne Eccles, University of Michigan