Promoting a Mind-Set and Strategies for Agentic Engagement in College Science Classrooms

• In Event: Motivation in Education SIG Poster Session: Motivational Processes and Effects

Abstract

Agentic engagement (AE), or attempts to proactively influence instruction, predicts positive classroom climate and students’ motivation. This investigation explored the benefits of an online intervention intended to cultivate an agentic engagement mindset and strategies in three randomized field experiments with over 900 college students in psychology (Study 1 and 2) or physics and chemistry courses (Study 3). Relative to comparisons conditions, students exposed to the target intervention at the beginning of the semester later reported a more agentic mindset, and in turn, greater in-class engagement, instructor autonomy support, need satisfaction, personal interest, and intentions to persist in the field at the semester end. The intervention worked similarly for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in science compared to counterparts.

Authors

• Erika Alisha Patall, University of Southern California

• Jeanette Zambrano, University of Southern California

• Alana Aiko Uilani Kennedy, Northern Arizona University

• Nicole Marissa Yates, University of Southern California

• Joseph Vallin, University of Southern California