Abstract
ABSTRACTUnderstanding students’ intentions to study science at upper-secondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education. Prior research has highlighted that students’ science confidence has been associated with their intentions to study science further, although under-confidence and over-confidence (lower or higher confidence than expected, given someone’s attainment) have not been considered in detail. Accordingly, this study explored whether under-confident, accurately evaluating, and over-confident students expressed different attitudes towards their science education, and explored how under-confidence and over-confidence might influence students’ science intentions. The questionnaire responses of 1523 students from 12 secondary schools in England were considered through analysis of variance and predictive modelling. Under-confident students expressed consistently lower science attitudes than accurately evaluating and over-confident students, despite reporting the same science grades as accurately evaluating students. Students’ intentions to study science were predicted by different factors in different ways, depending on whether the students were under-confident, accurate, or over-confident. For accurately evaluating and over-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-efficacy beliefs (their confidence in their expected future science attainment). For under-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-concept beliefs (their confidence in currently ‘doing well’ or ‘being good’ at science). Many other differences were also apparent. Fundamentally, under-confidence may be detrimental not simply through associating with lower attitudes, but through students considering their choices in different ways. Under-confidence may accordingly require attention to help ensure that students’ future choices are not unnecessarily constrained.
Highlights
Understanding students’ intentions to study science at upper-secondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education (Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency, 2011; National Science and Technology Council, 2013)
Under-confidence may be detrimental not through associating with lower attitudes, but through students considering their choices in different ways
What did students report about their intentions and other views concerning their science education? Did under-confident, accurate, and over-confident students express different attitudes or intentions?
Summary
Understanding students’ intentions to study science at upper-secondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education (Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency, 2011; National Science and Technology Council, 2013). Students’ intentions associate with various factors, including their attainment, confidence, (intrinsic) interest in science, and perceived (extrinsic) utility of science (Bøe & Henriksen, 2015; Regan & DeWitt, 2015). Promoting higher perceptions of the utility of science, for example, may help increase the number of students studying science. While higher confidence may be motivationally beneficial (Bandura, 1997), students’ confidence does not necessarily correspond to their actual attainment. Aiming to increase the number of students studying science through universally increasing confidence may reduce under-confidence for some but further increase over-confidence for others, and it is unclear whether this would be helpful
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