Self-efficacy is an aspect of students’ motivation that has been shown to play a critical role in students’ engagement, participation, and retention in academic careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Since women are underrepresented in STEM domains such as physics, we studied female and male students’ self-efficacy and its relation to learning outcomes in physics that can be useful for creating equitable and inclusive learning environments. In a longitudinal study, we surveyed approximately 1400 students in calculus-based physics 2 courses to investigate students’ motivational beliefs in physics using a validated survey. We examined female and male students’ self-efficacy scores and the extent to which self-efficacy related to learning outcomes (students’ grades and conceptual post-test scores), especially the significant gender difference in conceptual post-test scores. To reveal the unique contribution of self-efficacy on outcomes, we controlled for several other variables including Physics 1 grades, SAT math scores, and conceptual pretest scores in physics. We found that the gender differences in conceptual post-test performance were mediated by the model variables. In particular, initial self-efficacy differences showed a direct effect on outcomes even when controlling for students’ prior physics knowledge and skill differences, and self-efficacy also had the strongest total gender effect on conceptual learning. Given these findings, future work should focus on better understanding the drivers of these self-efficacy differences including the role that societal stereotypes and biases play in these in order to mitigate these differences.

中文翻译：

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妇女对物理学习自我效能低下的伤害

自我效能感是学生动机的一个方面，事实表明自我效能感在学生参与，参与和保留科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）学术职业中起着至关重要的作用。由于女性在STEM领域（例如物理领域）中的代表性不足，因此我们研究了男女学生的自我效能感及其与物理学习成果的关系，这对于创造公平，包容的学习环境非常有用。在一项纵向研究中，我们调查了大约1400名基于微积分的物理学2课程的学生，以使用经过验证的调查来调查学生对物理学的激励信念。我们研究了男女学生的自我效能得分以及自我效能与学习成果的相关程度（学生的成绩和概念性的测验分数），尤其是概念性的测验分数中存在明显的性别差异。为了揭示自我效能感对结果的独特贡献，我们控制了其他几个变量，包括物理1年级，SAT数学分数和物理概念性预测分数。我们发现概念上的测试后表现中的性别差异是由模型变量介导的。尤其是，即使控制了学生先前的物理知识和技能差异，初始自我效能的差异也对结果产生直接影响，自我效能对概念学习的总性别效应也最强。鉴于这些发现，