Verena S. Bonitz

Predicting Graduation The Role of Mathematics/Science Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy in the mathematics/science domain is conceptualized as partially determining whether science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students would persist toward reaching important milestones like graduating with a bachelor’s degree. The authors conducted a longitudinal study to examine if mathematics/science self-efficacy would significantly predict graduation status 4 to 8 years later after high school academic performance and mathematics aptitude were controlled in a university sample of introductory science students. Moreover, they looked at whether mathematics/science self-efficacy would significantly predict graduation status 4 to 8 years later after first semester grade point average (GPA) was controlled in addition to prior performance and aptitude. The sample consisted of 211 university students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree and 69 university students who did not graduate with a bachelor’s degree. The authors reported that mathematics/science self-efficacy significantly predicted graduation status 4 to 8 years later after controlling for prior performance and aptitude. The addition of mathematics/science self-efficacy improved the accuracy of identifying which participants dropped out before graduation by 4.4% in this sample. When first semester GPA was included in the control variables, the incremental contribution of mathematics/science self-efficacy to the prediction of retention status was null as expected. Findings are related to theory and prior research.

Predicting Science Achievement in India Role of Gender, Self-Efficacy, Interests, and Effort

We examined the role of self-reported effort in predicting chemistry and physics achievement after controlling for prior achievement, gender, and mathematics/science self-efficacy and interest. The data were collected from two Asian Indian high school samples. Self-reported effort was hypothesized to be the most salient predictor of achievement, given its important role in the Asian Indian culture. Based on prior findings, it was also hypothesized that gender would moderate the effect of interest on achievement. Both hypotheses were supported. After other key variables were controlled (prior achievement, gender, and mathematics/science self-efficacy and interest), self-reported effort was a significant predictor of both chemistry achievement and physics achievement. Moreover, gender did moderate the relation of interest and achievement. Boys who were more interested in physics and chemistry achieved higher scores, but girls’ level of interest did not correlate with their achievement.

Graduating With a Science Major The Roles of First-Year Science Interests and Educational Aspirations

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to determine whether the degree of science interests and educational aspirations in students’ first year of university would significantly differentiate those students who graduated with a science major from those students who did not graduate with a science major. Moreover, the authors expected that educational aspirations would moderate the relation between science interests and graduating with/without a science major. First-year college students in introductory science courses were surveyed in their first semester and then again upon graduation. These 166 students’ science interests and educational aspirations were assessed at Time 1; their educational major was assessed upon graduation. The findings supported both hypotheses. Science interests and educational aspirations significantly differentiated whether or not students graduated with science majors. Moreover, the interaction of science interests and educational aspirations also significantly differentiated whether or not students graduated with a science major. In short, students who graduated with science majors, compared to their counterparts who graduated with nonscience majors, had significantly higher interests only when they also had higher educational aspirations.

Distinguishing Beginning Premed Students from their Science Peers: The Salience of Proximal Variables

The purpose of the study was to better understand how students at the beginning of a premed curriculum are different from their science peers on career-related variables. A total of 165 undergraduates were classified into three groups; these were premed students, students with the intent to pursue a graduate degree, and students with the intent to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Both distal (e.g., prior achievement) and proximal (e.g., mathematics and science self-efficacy and interest) social cognitive constructs were measured. Based on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), the authors predicted that the three groups would not differ on the distal variables. In contrast, the authors expected systematic group differences on the proximal variables. The hypothesis was supported; no significant group differences were found for the distal variables, but the premed group scored significantly higher than the bachelor’s degree group on almost all proximal SCCT variables. Implications for career counseling are discussed.

Geschlechterunterschiede im Allgemeinwissen – die Folge geschlechtsspezifischer Berufsinteressen?

Welchen Einfluss haben Berufsinteressen auf den Wissensstand in verschiedenen Themengebieten? Konnen geschlechtsspezifische Interessen die gefundenen Geschlechterunterschiede im Testresultat erklaren? Diesen Fragestellungen geht der vorliegende Beitrag nach. Besonders wichtig erscheint es zu klaren, warum mannliche und weibliche Studierende im Studentenpisa-Test unterschiedliche Resultate erzielt haben. Denn weil viele Tests (z. B. bei der Vergabe von Studienplatzen oder Stipendien) eine Wissenskomponente enthalten, wurden systematische Unterschiede zwischen den Geschlechtern die Chancengleichheit der Bewerber gefahrden. Die statistische Auswertung der Daten zeigt, dass die Berufsinteressen der Studierenden rund zehn Prozent der individuellen Wissenstest-Ergebnisse erklaren konnen. Anders gesagt: Menschen erwerben verstarkt Wissen in den Bereichen, die sie interessieren und die einen Bezug zur individuellen Berufslaufbahn haben. Die gefundenen Geschlechterunterschiede in den Testergebnissen konnen jedoch nicht auf die Berufsinteressen der Teilnehmer zuruckgefuhrt werden. Weitere Nachforschungen sind erforderlich, um die Ursache dieser Geschlechterunterschiede zu ermitteln.

Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full for Women in the Sciences: Contextual Interpretations Versus Biological InterpretationsWhy Aren't There More Women in Science?CECISTEPHEN J. & WILLIAMSWENDY M. (EDS.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007. 248 pp.,

Science historian Miriam Levin provides a timely and provocative account of science education at Mount Holyoke College in the period since its founding as a seminary in 1837 until just before World War II. The account is timely given the recent resurgence of concern about attracting women to science and engineering; Mount Holyoke provides a unique case study of an institution that has been remarkably successful in this regard. It is provocative because Levin suggests that Mount Holyoke faculty used both their evangelical Protestant base and socially prescribed gender norms not as impediments, but as assets in forging a respected and competitive place in science education during intense years of professionalization. By limiting the scope of her account to one institution, Levin provides a microhistorical account that nonetheless has broader implications for our understanding of the history of women in science, the role of single-sex liberal arts colleges in their training, the impact of professionalization and specialization on female scientists and educators, and the relationships of science and religion in American higher education. Levin has drawn on archival holdings available at Mount Holyoke itself as well as its neighboring and nearby institutions, including Amherst, Oberlin, Williams, and Harvard. She paints a vivid portrait of life at Mount Holyoke and leaves the reader with many enduring images representing the scope and variety of scientific activity undertaken by professors and their students. She also does an excellent job of contextualizing these activities by drawing on several bodies of secondary literature in the history and sociology of science, religion, gender, American higher education, and the professions. Mount Holyoke was a seminary for the first 50 years of its existence. In 1888, after mounting pressure from faculty and students, the trustees applied for, and the institution was given, the right to grant the bachelor of science degree. This change in status was needed to maintain the school’s reputation as a leading institution in the higher education of women in an area of increasing professionalization and specialization. As Levin deftly shows, however, although many vestiges of the seminarian tradition were abandoned or updated (e.g., public confession was eliminated, science and religion were separated in the curriculum, and dress codes became less austere), other aspects of Mount Holyoke’s religious identity remained intact. One of these was the Protestant belief in the fundamental equality of the male and female intellect. This conviction allowed the female science faculty to have a firm sense of their skills and the confidence to forge interdependent relationships with male peers. This notion of separate spheres was cast aside in favor of a network of bilateral relationships in which women science faculty, exemplified by the career of zoology instructor Cornelia Clapp, both benefitted from and contributed to the expertise of their male counterparts through intellectual exchanges, participation in scientific meetings (especially, in the case of Clapp, at the Marine Biological Laboratory), and invitations to teach. Levin ends her account in 1937 with the appointment of Mount Holyoke’s first male president, Roswell G. Ham, and notes the challenges that faced the college due to the dynamics of domestic and professional life in America, especially for women, following the onset of the Great Depression. Hostility to working women and promarriage values forced Mount Holyoke, and especially its science faculty, to reconsider its educational mission. However, the postwar influx of science funding reinstated the importance of science education at Mount Holyoke and provided opportunities that benefitted graduates and faculty alike. Today, Mount Holyoke continues to be a leader in producing graduates who go on to receive doctoral degrees in science and mathematics. Readers hoping to learn about the role and status of psychology at Mount Holyoke and its growth as a laboratory science will be disappointed. Psychology falls outside the purview of Levin’s analysis; she makes only a passing reference to the brief time that Helen Thompson (Woolley) spent there, noting that she established the psychological laboratory in the early 1900s. Levin’s focus is on the natural and physical sciences, despite the fact that the number of psychology courses offered at Mount Holyoke was far greater than the number of offerings at most neighboring colleges. Nonetheless, this book is an important addition to the literature on American women in science. Its more circumscribed unit of analysis—the first 100 years of science at one women’s college in New England—provides a nice complement to the more synoptic work of historians such as Rossiter (1982, 1995) and reminds us that we can always learn something from the individual case that is surprising, interesting, and useful.