Abstract
The present two studies with a 3-year longitudinal design examined the co-development of science, math, and language (e.g., Spanish/Finnish) interest among 1,317 Spanish and 804 Finnish secondary school students across their transition to post-compulsory secondary education, taking into account the role of gender, performance, and socioeconomic status (SES). The research questions were analyzed with parallel process latent growth curve (LGC) modeling. The results showed that Spanish students’ interest in each domain slightly decreased over time, whereas Finnish students experienced an overall high and relatively stable level of interest in all domains. Further, boys showed greater interest in math and science in both countries, whereas girls reported having a greater interest in languages. Moreover, Spanish and Finnish students with high academic achievement typically experienced high interest in different domains, however, some declines in their interest occurred later on.
Highlights
According to the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation (EVT), interest and task values play a crucial role in shaping students’ achievement and career choices, even more than ability selfconcepts (Wigfield and Cambria, 2010; Wigfield and Eccles, 2002)
The initial level of science interest positively predicted the linear slope of math interest (s.e. 0.32, p
The present study contributes to STEM education in Spain and Finland since it is the first to investigate the co-development of math, science, and language interest among Spanish and Finnish secondary school students across the transition to postcompulsory education, and taking into account the role of gender, academic achievement, and family socioeconomic status (SES)
Summary
According to the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation (EVT), interest and task values play a crucial role in shaping students’ achievement and career choices, even more than ability selfconcepts (Wigfield and Cambria, 2010; Wigfield and Eccles, 2002). Task values are domain-specific; a student can be interested in math but not in languages and vice versa–(Frenzel et al, 2010). Together with other task values, interest value plays an important role in “shaping individuals’ achievement-related decisions like activity choice, participation, and engagement” When students intrinsically value an activity, they often become deeply engaged in it and can persist at it for a long time (Wigfield and Eccles, 2002;Cambria, 2010). The low representation of women in many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
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