Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that utility-value interventions can promote students’ academic motivation and achievement. Moreover, there is evidence that minimal interventions are particularly useful for ethnic minority and first-generation students at college. Whether this is also the case with high school students belonging to minorities and having low parental educational background, is unclear. In a double-blind randomized field experiment with N = 439 academic-track students from 9th grade in Germany, we investigated whether a short version of an established utility-value intervention (i.e., quotations evaluation intervention) would promote the students’ utility, attainment, and intrinsic values in math and their math test performance after the intervention. Moreover, we investigated if such short-term intervention effects were moderated by students’ migration background and parental educational background. We found significant positive main effects of the intervention on the students’ utility and attainment values in math compared to a control group. The effect on attainment value was especially pronounced for students with migration background whose parents held no university entrance certificate. We discuss the practical relevance of these findings and highlight challenges for future research in this field.

摘要

越来越多的研究表明，效用价值干预可以促进学生的学业动机和成就。此外，有证据表明，最低限度的干预对大学里的少数民族和第一代学生特别有用。属于少数族裔且父母教育背景低的高中生是否也是这种情况尚不清楚。在N的双盲随机现场实验中 = 来自德国 9 年级的 439 名学术轨道学生，我们调查了已建立的效用价值干预（即报价评估干预）的简短版本是否会提高学生在数学及其数学测试中的效用、成就和内在价值干预后的表现。此外，我们调查了这种短期干预效果是否受到学生移民背景和父母教育背景的影响。与对照组相比，我们发现干预对学生的数学效用和成就值有显着的积极影响。对于父母没有大学入学证书的移民背景的学生，对学业值的影响尤其明显。