Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in STEM: Trends in Self-Efficacy and Its Relationship With Academic Outcomes

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Self-Efficacy, Math Identity, and Social and Emotional Learning Integration Into Content Areas

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between STEM self-efficacy and academic performance through multilevel models. We report trends in this relationship across four cycles of an international large-scale assessment. We find that despite the overall increase in the country-level self-efficacy from 2003 to 2015, the relationship with academic performance has weakened over this period. The finding suggests that self-efficacy became less of a predictor of academic success than has been previously hypothesized (e.g., Richardson et.al., 2012) which can be partly due to self-efficacy estimates being based on a self-reported instrument rather than true behavioral measure.

Authors

• Juhee Ryu, Korea International School, Jeju Campus

• Maria Bertling, Harvard University