Diversity of undergraduates in STEM courses: individual and demographic differences in changes in self-efficacy, epistemic beliefs, and intrapersonal attribute profiles

ABSTRACTAcross undergraduate STEM learning contexts in several countries, students' intrapersonal attributes of epistemic beliefs, self-efficacy beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and sense of identity have been found to influence learning and to change in response to educational practices. However, research can mask individual and demographic differences in student's attributes that may moderate or mediate the relationship between educational practices and learning outcomes. We employed variable-centered and person-centered methods to examine individual and demographic differences in changes in students' intrapersonal attributes and patterns of interrelationship among attributes with a study sample of students (N = 4,500) in 14 STEM undergraduate courses (8 biology, 4 chemistry, and 2 statistics) at three research universities in the United States. Variable-centered analyses revealed overall increases in students' science self-efficacy beliefs and epistemic beliefs even though these outcomes were not intentionally targeted as learning objectives. However, person-centered analyses indicated that not all students experienced these gains. For example, self-identified Asian/Pacific Islander and Black students were more likely to be members of groups demonstrating a decrease in science self-efficacy, whereas Asian/Pacific Islander students and men were less likely to be members of the subgroup with consistently evaluativist epistemic beliefs and higher GPAs. Using latent profile analysis (LPA), we identified five distinct student profiles that reflected different patterns of interrelationship of epistemic beliefs, science and writing self-efficacy beliefs, and science identity. We discuss the implications of these findings for educational practices, particularly with regard to intentionally fostering diverse students' self-efficacy, sense of identity, and adaptive epistemic beliefs.KEYWORDS: Intrapersonal attributesperson-centered analysisself-efficacyepistemic beliefsmotivationscience identity AcknowledgementsThis study was supported by the National Science Foundation, grant number DUE – 1525602. We appreciate all the students who took the time to complete our survey and extend our thanks to the faculty who implement the survey in their courses: Dorian Canelas, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, Mark Decker, Tanya Duncan, Brian Gibbens, Brenda Gunderson, Catherine Kirkpatrick, David Matthes, Laurie Mauger, William Morris, Anna Mosser, Alicia Romero, Christopher Roy, Maria Tackett, Peter Tiffin, and John Willis.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by National Science Foundation: [Grant Number 1525602].