Three Ideas for Post-Coronavirus Educational Recovery
There are many ways that schools can proactively address the inevitable and inequitable gaps caused by coronavirus-related school closures.
Forbes / March 30, 2020
The expectancy–value theory (EVT) positions expectations and value beliefs as important predictors of academic success. The authors, thus, investigated the prevalence of academic self-efficacy and intrinsic, attainment, utility, and cost values amongst international STEM students in Germany, as well as their associations with gender, parental academic background, cultural characteristics, and their interplay. the authors also compared STEM to non-STEM students. Analyses with hierarchical multi-group regression models using data from 1590 international bachelor students (nSTEM = 882, nnon-STEM = 708) revealed high levels of academic self-efficacy, attainment, intrinsic, and utility values but also high costs. International STEM students indicated lower levels of academic self-efficacy than non-STEM students; all other results were similar in both subject-groups. There were no direct associations between gender and the expectancy–value components but continuous-generation students showed higher academic self-efficacy than first-generation students. Significant associations between cultural background and all expectancy–value components were identified, most of them applied to costs. In some cases, the associations differed by gender. Study-related language skills were related to all expectancy–value components whereas host- and home-culture orientations were distinctly associated with attainment, intrinsic, and utility values. Implications of the results for interventions supporting the academic success of international STEM students and future research needs are discussed.
