This study tested a self-generated utility value intervention aimed at increasing undergraduate statistics students’ motivation and achievement. The intervention was based on Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020) and encouraged students to make relevant connections between statistics learning content and their lives, primarily emphasising the content’s usefulness to the student, or utility value. In testing a self-generated utility value intervention within the domain of undergraduate statistics, the study extended research previously conducted in high school and undergraduate sciences (psychology and biology) and replicated Hulleman et al. (2017) which tested the role of frequency of students’ connections between the learning content and their lives in their motivation and achievement. In addition to transferring a self-generated utility value intervention to the domain of statistics, the study’s main contribution was made by investigating the role of connection quality—the quality of utility value connections undergraduate statistics students made between the learning content and their lives in their motivation and achievement. The study used collected data from a blindly randomised longitudinal field experiment conducted with undergraduate business school students from a research-intensive university located in the north-eastern USA. The students were of two differing sections of the same 15-week introductory statistics course. The self-generated utility value intervention consisted of prompts, twice during the semester, which instructed stud¬¬ents to write 2-3 paragraphs in response to. Data collected was comprised of students’ gender, first-generation status, initial/final achievement assessments, pre/post self-reports on motivation (expectancy, cost, intrinsic value, utility value) and connection frequency, and researcher scaled ratings coding on student intervention responses for connection quality. Part I Results from this study suggest that the intervention significantly increased students’ achievement (d = .42)—an approximately 7-percentage point difference between intervention and control group conditions. Furthermore, the intervention was found to be especially effective at increasing at-risk, low initial achievement, students’ motivation (expectancy, d = .54) and achievement (d = .87)—an approximately 14.5-percentage point difference between group conditions. Study results also suggest that the intervention’s impact on at-risk students’ achievement was mediated via motivation increases—through students’ expectancy for success, though, not through students’ utility value. The Part I results were confirmatory of Hulleman et al.’s (2017) findings—the intervention effected students’ achievement, but the pathway of indirect effects traversed through students’ expectancy, not their utility value which Hulleman et al. (2017) and this study both hypothesised it would do instead. Part II Results attempted to explain the intervention’s pathways of effects through expectancy to achievement by creating new measures, connection quality measures. Connection quality measures were constructed to capture students’ utility value more effectively than the self-reported utility value survey measure. This study’s Part II Results suggest that the intervention was found, again, to significantly increase students’ achievement (d = 1.46), but the indirect intervention effects traversed a pathway to affecting students’ achievement, not through their expectancy, but through their utility value (as captured via the newly minted connection quality measures), to their motivation (cost and interest), and then to their achievement. The new connection quality measures, exploratorily, were found to capture students’ utility value more effectively than the self-reported utility value survey measure, enabling the self-generated utility value intervention’s effects on students’ achievement and motivation to be further explained. / Math & Science Education

<p>  </p> <p>Food system STEM projects have the capacity to motivate high school students in urban schools. This study explored food as a context to engage students because everyone interacts with food on a daily basis and has had cultural experiences related to food. An integrated STEM approach in combination with a systems thinking approach challenged students to make transdisciplinary connections, view problems from different perspectives, analyze complex relationships, and develop 21st-century and career skills (Hilimire et al., 2014; Nanayakkara et al., 2017). The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the relevance students perceive in Ag+STEM content by measuring high school students' self-efficacy, intrinsic value, attainment value, cost value, and utility value after participating in a food system STEM project. The study was informed by Eccles and Wigfield’s (2020) Situated Expectancy Value Theory. The convenience sample of this study was comprised of high school students from metropolitan area schools. High school students completed a food system STEM project with a food system context. Quantitative data was collected using the developed Food System Motivation questionnaire. Data were collected through a retrospective pre-test and a post-test. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data including means and standard deviations. Relationships were explored by calculating correlations.</p> <p>There were four conclusions from this study. First, high school students were somewhat interested, felt it was important to do well, and agreed there were costs regarding participation in the food system STEM project. Second, high school students reported higher personal and local utility value motivation after completing the food system STEM project. Third, high school students were somewhat self-efficacious in completing the project tasks and completing the project tasks informed by their cultural identity and experiences. Fourth, intrinsic value and attainment value motivation (independent variables) were related to personal and local utility value motivation and project and cultural self-efficacy motivation (dependent variables). Implications for practice and recommendations for future research were discussed.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Accurately assessing outcomes of students’ motivation when solving complex food system problems through integrating STEM learning can describe their learning experiences and help teachers make relevant connections. This study shows high school students self-reported that they were motivated by solving food system STEM projects.</p><p dir="ltr">The purpose of the study was to predict high school students’ self-efficacy (confirmed by Exploratory Factor Analysis, EFA) based on Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT) variables (confirmed by EFA). The convenience sample for this study was students from four high schools in Indiana (<i>N</i> = 160) who had participated in food system STEM projects at their schools. Quantitative data was collected using the Food System Motivation Questionnaire containing 41 items related to two self-efficacy variables and five SEVT variables. Quantitative data were analyzed using Principal Components Analysis, descriptive statistics, simple linear correlations, and multiple regression. Qualitative data were collected using a focus group interview protocol (Appendix D) and analyzed using thematic coding (deductive) followed by pattern coding. Quantitative and qualitative findings were analyzed using triangulation.</p><p dir="ltr">There were four conclusions to this study. First, the Food System Motivation Questionnaire accurately and reliably measured five variables aligned with SEVT motivation. Second, students were motivated regarding the project’s usefulness in their local contexts and reported higher cultural project self-efficacy after completing the project.<b> </b>Third, over 70% of high school students’ cultural project self-efficacy to complete a food system STEM project can be predicted based on their local context utility value, personal importance and usefulness, intrinsic value, and cost value. Local context utility value was the highest contributor of unique variance. Last, <a href="" target="_blank">after completing the food system STEM projects, urban high school students shared they made connections to their families, local and global community contexts, and future careers and applications. </a>Implications regarding how teachers can motivate high school students to solve food system STEM projects were discussed.</p>