Promoting literacy and numeracy among middle school students: Exploring the mediating role of self-efficacy and gender differences

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Highlights

  • Mediational effect of self-efficacy between numeracy expectation and achievement.

  • The mediational effect occurred within classrooms but the effect varied by classroom.

  • Gender did not play differently between expectation and efficacy.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of self-efficacy to mediate the relations among 6th and 7th grade students’ literacy and numeracy expectations and their Reading and Mathematics performance and determine any differences by gender. Participants were 793 middle school students from 44 classrooms in 26 American schools. Multilevel mediational analysis revealed that self-efficacy partly mediated students’ numeracy expectations and their Mathematics performance; this effect is consistent within but not between classrooms. No mediational effect for literacy expectations and Reading performance was observed. These effects did not differ between males and females. Implications for teacher preparation and development are discussed.

Introduction

The role of self-efficacy in promoting student success has been widely examined across multiple international contexts. Findings consistently indicate that believing in one’s ability to be successful predicts their English and Mathematics performance during middle school (Høigaard, Kovač, Øverby, & Haugen, 2015; You, Dang, & Lim, 2016). Studies further suggest that the influence of self-efficacy on student achievement can vary by gender due to differing socialization (Guo, Marsh, Parker, Morin, & Yeung, 2015). Gender differences in self-efficacy and student achievement typically emerge during the middle school years and widen as students age through school (Huang, 2013). However, despite evidence on the relations among self-efficacy, academic achievement, and gender differences, there is a dearth of knowledge on whether gender differences exist in the ability of self-efficacy to mediate students’ literacy and numeracy expectations and their English and Mathematics performance during middle school. Additionally, although classrooms are important in promoting students’ self-efficacy beliefs (Lee & Jonson-Reid, 2016; Gold, 2010), the vast majority of studies have failed to account for the nesting of students within classrooms (e.g., Huang, Zhang, & Hudson, 2019; Skaalvik, Federici, & Klassen, 2015; You et al., 2016). This raises the question as to whether the mediational effects of self-efficacy between academic expectations and outcomes are consistent across classrooms.

There is a need to understand whether the role of self-efficacy differs across gender, particularly during the middle school years (grades 5th to 8th; ages 11–14). This is a period when students begin to mature in the understanding of their own literacy and numeracy abilities, and they can begin to shape expectations on their own intellectual abilities (Recber, Isiksal, & Koç, 2018). Given the heightened impact of social encounters, such as those with teachers and classmates, on students’ beliefs and, ultimately, achievement, it seems possible that effects will differ by gender (Cherng & Liu, 2017; Gold, 2010; Karp, 2010; You et al., 2016; Zhang, 2014). Exploring how gender affects student’s academic achievement, an area relatively under-studied in the extant literature, can determine the need for gender-specific differentiated instruction that promote student success.

Bandura’s social cognitive theory has been applied to the understanding of self-efficacy and student success in many contexts (Carroll & Fox, 2017; Doménech-Betoret, Abellán-Roselló, & Gómez-Artiga, 2017; Falco, 2019; Gold, 2010; Huang et al., 2019; Huang, 2013; Karp, 2010; Lee & Jonson-Reid, 2016; Recber et al., 2018; Rivera, 2012; Skaalvik et al., 2015; Xu & Qi, 2019). The theory considers individuals as agents proactively engaged in their own development (Bandura, 1993). Self-efficacy, as one component of the theory, is defined as the individual’s perceived capability to perform a given academic task (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017). The theory posits that students’ perceptions of their capabilities to accomplish challenging tasks is more critical in determining success than their actual level of ability (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017; Pajares & Graham, 1999). Simply stated, when faced with aversive and challenging academic content, students with higher self-efficacy will likely display more persistence and invest more effort in their learning (Huang, 2013; Lee and Jonson-Reid, 2016; Ozkal, 2019; Skaalvik et al., 2015). Therefore, they achieve better results (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017; Lee and Jonson-Reid, 2016; Ozkal, 2019).

Educators have widely applied the self-efficacy framework to promoting numeracy and literacy excellence among middle school students. Scholarship supports this approach. For example, Ozkal (2019) evaluated the relationship between self-efficacy and Mathematics achievement and found that 6th, 7th, and 8th graders’ self-efficacy beliefs positively predicted their Mathematics achievement. Recber et al.’s (2018) study of 7th graders found that self-efficacy explained a quarter of the variance in students’ Mathematics performance. While these studies highlight the importance of self-efficacy on student achievement, they do not examine whether impact varies by gender.

Self-efficacy can mediate the relations between student academic expectations and their subsequent achievement (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017; Levi, Einav, Ziv, Raskind, & Margalit, 2014). Academic expectations shape students’ beliefs and motivations and foster immersion in learning behaviors, which directly promotes academic excellence (Levi et al., 2014; Rutherford, 2015). Students with high academic expectations perform better and are more persistent in completing academic tasks than students with low academic expectations (Cherng & Liu, 2017). Research commonly acknowledges that academic expectations is a significant predictor of academic achievement and educational and occupational attainment in schools around the world (Carolan, 2017; Cherng & Liu, 2017; Fan & Wolters, 2014; Guo et al., 2015; Liu, Cheng, Chen, & Wu, 2009; Trinidad, 2018).

The impact of academic expectations on student achievement may be both direct and indirect through self-efficacy. Academic expectations for excellence, on the other hand, can induce anxiety and stress that ultimately lessen academic performance (Huang et al., 2019). Students who are confident in their ability to perform well in school tasks are more likely to experience positive emotions and to actively participate in challenging tasks (Madjar & Chohat, 2017). Low self-efficacy is associated with poor performance in academic settings (Bandura, 1993; Schnell, Ringeisen, Raufelder, & Rohrmann, 2015; Soland, 2019). Students with low self-efficacy are often sensitive to defeat and easily lose faith in their own abilities (Bandura, 1993). Students with low self-efficacy have a heightened fear or assumption of failure that is likely to lead individuals to shy away from difficult tasks (Bandura, 1993; Ersanlı, 2015; Huang, 2013; Lee and Jonson-Reid, 2016; Soland, 2019). Ozkal (2019) found that students with low self-efficacy employ less effort on difficult tasks and spend more time dwelling on past mistakes. Xu and Qi (2019) found with a sample of Chinese middle school students that academic self-efficacy directly affected students’ academic performance and played an important mediating role in regulating other factors that affect student achievement.

Understanding gender differences with self-efficacy can be explained by the expectancy-value model of achievement (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). This perspective suggests educational and occupational expectations are socially constructed due to the interaction between ability and gender and the socialization process that is based on gender-specific stereotypes (Carolan, 2017). Promoting teachers being cognizant of inhibiting gender roles in the classroom is important to the values of fostering greater student achievement.

A number of studies show gender differences in both academic expectations and academic self-efficacy. Vantieghem and Van Houtte (2015) found that Belgian teachers acknowledge a preference for female students and a belief that they are more teachable than male students. Students’ educational expectancies are subject to influence from psychological, social, and cultural factors (Cherng and Liu, 2017). Understanding such gender differences is important as students’ perceptions of their teacher’s motivation to teach them has a substantial impact on students’ self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation (You et al., 2016).

Social factors can include socialization of students into gender stereotypes. Educational expectations of teachers and parents tend to be gendered and may be communicated to students in this manner (Carolan, 2017). In one study on gender differences among 9th grade students, the direct effect of grades on academic expectations in 11th grade was 40 % less impactful for girls than for boys of the same age (Carolan, 2017). Educational expectations are a consequence of one’s immediate social environment (Carolan, 2017). Another study found a similar relationship between academic expectations and motivation regarding gender differences. Guo et al. (2015) found gender differences in the relations among academic expectations and academic motivational beliefs.

Gender differences in self-efficacy also appear to be subject specific. Female students tend to have higher language arts self-efficacy than male students, while males exhibit higher Mathematics, computer, and social science self-efficacy than females (Huang, 2013; Vantieghem, Vermeersch, & Van Houtte, 2014). Overall, females have equal or lower Mathematics self-efficacy than males at every educational level, even when they have equal or better Mathematics performance (Huang, 2013). Females also have higher Mathematics anxiety (Huang et al., 2019). This gap may reflect men valuing science, technology, engineering, Mathematics (STEM)1 fields and women valueing humanities fields to a greater extent (Vantieghem et al., 2014).

Gender differences generally emerge in elementary school but intensify in middle school. (Pajares, 2002) proposed that males and females have similar levels of Mathematics self-efficacy during elementary school, while males develop higher Mathematics self-efficacy than females by middle school; these assertions align with Huang’s (2013) research. Likewise, literacy self-efficacy is higher in females during the middle school years (Huang, 2013).

The purpose of this study is to understand if self-efficacy mediates the relation between academic expectations and academic achievement and whether this relation differs by gender. Understanding how academic expectations and self-efficacy contribute to academic achievement can help to engage students in practicing these behaviors. The middle school years are a period when student’s perceptions of themselves and their abilities are more malleable than later on, which makes it a good opportunity for interventions targeting students’ self-efficacy (Fan & Wolters, 2014).

Exploring gender differences in academic expectations is important because academic aspirations and engagement in adolescents are highly predictive of educational career (Guo et al., 2015). Given widespread agreement of the need for greater gender diversity in STEM fields, attention should be paid to understanding the gender differences in the development of student self-efficacy as it independently contributes to students’ career choice (Huang et al., 2019). Accordingly, this study considers classroom assignment where self-efficacy and student outcomes can be compared both within and across classrooms. It evaluates whether self-efficacy’s mediation of middle school literary and numeracy expectations and students’ English and Mathematics achievement vary by gender. The study’s basic conceptual model is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

This study was part of a project titled the Power of Two: Pairing Literacy and Numeracy for the Middle Grades funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED)2 grant program in 2015. It was a longitudinal year-long project administered by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform. Cluster

Descriptive analysis

Table 1 displays the student demographics and Table 2 summarizes the descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations among self-efficacy, numeracy and literacy expectations, and MAP academic achievement. As seen from Table 1, 62 % students were from 6th grade and 38 % from 7th grade. The racial/ethnic breakdown consisted of 38 % Latino/Latina students, 31 % White, and 17 % African-American. A majority, 84 %, received free or reduced price lunch and gender was almost evenly distributed in the

Discussion

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediational role of self-efficacy in 6th and 7th grade students’ literacy and numeracy expectations and their academic achievement in Reading and Mathematics respectively while taking into account the clustering of students within classrooms. Further, we investigate whether gender moderated this relationship. Academic expectations can either predict academic achievement by promoting motivation and investment, or can prevent academic achievement by

Conclusion

This study evaluated the role of self-efficacy in mediating the relationship among 6th and 7th grade students’ literacy and numeracy expectations and their Reading and Mathematics performance. As discussed above, self-efficacy partially mediated the relation between numeracy expectations and Mathematics achievement. Self-efficacy did not however have this effect between ELA expectations and Reading achievement. Since Mathematics teachers in this study incorporated an intentional and repeated

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) program, through Grant Number U367D150030, to the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform. The U.S. Department of Education provided technical assistance on the design. The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform provided input on the data collection instruments. The decision to submit this manuscript for publication and the opinions expressed are those of the

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