Abstract
We examined the relationships among gender, planning, and academic expectations through the testing of two alternative models with latent variables tested with LISREL 8.80: one model considered planning as a mediator of the relationship between gender and academic expectations, and the other model considered academic expectations as mediators of the relationship between gender and planning. Participants were 662 first-year higher-education students from two academic years, predominantly female (60%) and mainly with majors in the juridical-social field (66.2%). The Inventario sobre Estrategias Metacognitivas (IEM; Inventory of Metacognitive Strategies) and the Academic Perceptions Questionnaire (APQ) were applied at the beginning of the first semester to assess planning and academic expectations, respectively. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the IEM’s structure after examining its psychometric properties with the sample from the first academic year (N = 338). The test of the alternative mediation models with the full sample indicates that the best model was that with planning as a mediator. In this model, gender directly predicted only two APQ academic expectations, but with the mediation of planning, gender predicted all seven academic expectations. Women showed higher levels of academic expectations and planning than did men. The results are discussed at both the theoretical and practical levels.
Highlights
It is well known that gender explains in a distinctive way learning-related perceptions and behaviors of highereducation (HE) students, namely, regarding planning and academic expectations (AEs).Planning has been defined as a hierarchical process that can control the order in which one performs a sequence of operations
The 20 items must be collapsed into a single factor, as should have been done in the Inventario sobre Estrategias Metacognitivas (IEM)’s validation study
The factor, with six items from the IEM bifactorial oblique model related to planning and four items related to self-checking, was named planning, corresponding to a derivation based on theory and empirical results that point out that self-checking is interconnected with planning (Das & Misra, 2015)
Summary
It is well known that gender explains in a distinctive way learning-related perceptions and behaviors of highereducation (HE) students, namely, regarding planning and academic expectations (AEs).Planning has been defined as a hierarchical process that can control the order in which one performs a sequence of operations. (2020) 33:5 gender differences were observed in HE students’ planning (Voyer & Voyer, 2014; Wang & Degol, 2017): women performed better than men in language, attention, control, and effort in academic tasks, regardless of the area of study (social or mathematical and science), which involves a higher level of planning and academic success. AEs are defined as a set of representations about what HE students expect to do during their academic life (Deaño et al, 2015) through an interpretation of their HE experiences, in line with past experiences (Cole, Kennedy, & Ben-Avie, 2009). Within a multidimensional view of AEs (Diniz et al, 2018), men, more than women, show aspirations to achieve stable and prestigious future employment, develop autonomy and self-confidence, study abroad, participate in committees, and comply with the expectations of family members regarding the time spent working and career success
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