With the increased growth of career opportunities in STEM fields, educators and policymakers have sought to better understand the nature and development of students’ motivation to pursue science academic and career pathways successfully. However, our understanding of motivational constructs such as self-efficacy has mostly been based on studies of predominantly White samples, neglecting the perspectives and experiences of students from historically marginalized groups underrepresented in STEM academic and career pathways. In the present study, we examined science motivation in six high school students of color who participated in a brief, near peer mentoring program with undergraduate mentors of color. Deductive and inductive coding of semi-structured interviews with mentees and mentors revealed that science self-efficacy not only has a salient future-oriented component, but also centers around the importance of forming and maintaining interpersonal connections with others through proxy agency and help-seeking behaviors. These data point to the utility of a sociocultural perspective in expanding our understanding of self-efficacy—and motivational processes more generally—in a way that is more inclusive of the experiences of racial and ethnic minority youth.

随着 STEM 领域职业机会的增加，教育工作者和政策制定者试图更好地了解学生成功追求科学学术和职业道路的动机的性质和发展。然而，我们对自我效能等动机结构的理解主要基于对主要是白人样本的研究，而忽略了在 STEM 学术和职业道路中代表性不足的历史边缘群体学生的观点和经验。在本研究中，我们检查了六名有色人种高中生的科学动机，他们与有色人种本科生导师一起参加了一个简短的、近乎同伴指导计划。对学员和导师的半结构化访谈的演绎和归纳编码表明，科学自我效能不仅具有突出的面向未来的成分，而且还围绕通过代理代理和寻求帮助与他人建立和维持人际关系的重要性。行为。这些数据表明，社会文化视角在扩大我们对自我效能感——以及更普遍的动机过程——的理解中的效用，以一种更包容种族和少数族裔青年的经历的方式。