Abstract
Abstract. Feeling excluded by fellow students may be associated with lower levels of adaptive help-seeking. In a cross-sectional study, we compared self-reported help-seeking strategies (autonomy-oriented, dependency-oriented, help-seeking avoidance) among N = 418 students in 25 seminar and tutorial groups in the undergraduate introductory courses of two subject domains: computer science and education. Analyses showed that, overall, students reported lower autonomy-oriented help-seeking and higher help-seeking avoidance in computer science than in education. In computer science, perceived peer exclusion predicted more help-seeking avoidance among both male and female students and less autonomy-oriented help-seeking among females. In education, however, perceived peer exclusion was a significant predictor of both male and female students’ lower autonomy-oriented help-seeking. Results suggest that, in computer science, help-seeking appears to have an “image problem” signaling competence-related inferiority rather than being a form of effective self-regulated learning. Implications for enhancing adaptive help exchange cultures in computer science are discussed.
Highlights
Feeling excluded by fellow students may be associated with lower levels of adaptive help-seeking
There were no significant mean differences between male and female students in the domain of computer science, whereas in our second domain, education, male students reported significantly less autonomy-oriented help-seeking within their seminar group than did female students (B = .327, p ≤ .01, d = .506)
We found no difference between female students’ autonomy-oriented help-seeking in the two subject domains (B = .173, p = .094, d = .259), female students in computer science did report higher help-seeking avoidance than females in education (B = -.510, p ≤ .001, d = .757)
Summary
Feeling excluded by fellow students may be associated with lower levels of adaptive help-seeking. In computer science, perceived peer exclusion predicted more help-seeking avoidance among both male and female students and less autonomy-oriented help-seeking among females. In education perceived peer exclusion was a significant predictor of both male and female students’ lower autonomy-oriented help-seeking. Often for the first time, students cannot draw back on existing peer groups and cliques to help them master challenging course content While this transition is challenging for many students (Strayhorn, 2018), much research has demonstrated that additional obstacles emerge for students who belong to a minority: frequently, these students doubt their belonging to the new learning environment, catalyzed by experiencing greater social exclusion and their perceived lower academic aptitude compared to their peers (Höhne & Zander, 2019; Gopalan & Brady, 2020). We suggest that a comparison of these domains is interesting because recent research on domain-specific ability beliefs found a high emphasis on “brilliance” as a requirement for success in STEM domains (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; Deiglmayr et al, 2019), whereas this should be less the case in HEED domains (healthcare, elementary education, and the domestic spheres)
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