The Role of Students’ Expectancies and Values in Academic Outcomes
The postulated associations between expectancies and values with academic outcomes have been tested in numerous empirical studies in authentic educational contexts. Overall,
am-ple empirical evidence has supported the predictive power of expectancies and values for out-comes such as effort, persistence, task engagement, course enrollment, study choice, and achievement (e.g., Durik et al., 2006; Marsh et al., 2005; Musu-Gillette et al., 2015; Nagengast et al., 2011; Nagy et al., 2006; Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2007; Wille et al., 2020; for overviews, see also Wigfield et al., 2009; Wigfield & Eccles, 2020).
When considered separately, first, students’ expectancies (sometimes also operational-ized as competence beliefs, academic self-concept, or academic self-efficacy) have been con-firmed as strong predictors of academic achievement in various subjects and domains (e.g., Marsh & Yeung, 1997; Trautwein et al., 2006; for meta-analyses, see also Möller et al., 2020;
and Valentine et al., 2004). Even in longitudinal studies and even when additionally controlling for prior achievement, expectancies were found to be a strong predictor of subsequent achieve-ment (e.g., Simpkins et al., 2006). In addition to achieveachieve-ment, such self-beliefs have also been found to predict, for instance, academic effort and engagement (e.g., Trautwein et al., 2009;
Walker et al., 2006). A positive academic self-concept was furthermore associated with higher levels of positive (and lower levels of negative) academic emotions such as enjoyment or anger toward classroom learning (e.g., Goetz et al., 2010), with higher levels of school adjustment (e.g., Wouters et al., 2011), and even with higher levels of general psychological adjustment such as self-esteem (e.g., Trautwein, Lüdtke, Köller, et al., 2006).
Second, students’ values (measured as one general construct, e.g., Jacobs et al., 2002;
with composite measures of some of the values, e.g., Durik et al., 2006; measured separately, e.g., Trautwein et al., 2012; or even further differentiated into subfacets, e.g., Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Schreier, et al., 2015) have been found to predict students’ performance and choices (e.g., Bong, 2001; Chow et al., 2012; Durik et al., 2006; Roeser et al., 2000; Simpkins et al., 2006). Students with positive values have furthermore been found to report higher levels of effort (e.g., Cole et al., 2008; Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2007), engagement (Chow et al., 2012;
Durik et al., 2006; Simpkins et al., 2006; Trautwein, Lüdtke, Köller, et al., 2006; Walker et al., 2006), a more adaptive self-regulated learning profile (e.g., Metallidou & Vlachou, 2010), as well as lower levels of school problem behaviors and negative peer affiliations (e.g., Roeser et al., 2000).
Third, when simultaneously considering expectancies and values, they have shown the unique power to predict academic outcomes. Whereas students’ expectancies have turned out to be stronger predictors of performance (e.g., Meece et al., 1990; Trautwein et al., 2012),
students’ values were particularly good predictors of their intentions to stick with and to actu-ally choose different academic activities (e.g., Bong, 2001; Meece et al., 1990).
Finally, when additionally taking into consideration the originally proposed multiplica-tive term between expectancies and values (Atkinson, 1957; for a more recent discussion, see Trautwein et al., 2013), research findings revealed a small but reliable increase in the extent to which expectancies and values predicted students’ (homework) engagement, course selection, career intentions, achievement, entrance into university, and maladaptive behavior (e.g., Guo et al., 2015, 2016; J. Lee et al., 2014; Nagengast et al., 2011, 2013; Trautwein et al., 2012).
Such findings indicated synergistic effects with the most positive effects on the respective out-comes when both expectancies and values were high (Nagengast et al., 2011; Trautwein et al., 2012). More recent person-centered approaches to expectancies and values also revealed that expectancy-value profile membership (e.g., high levels of self-concept, importance, and intrin-sic value vs. medium to high levels of self-concept and importance but low levels of intrinintrin-sic value) predicted (STEM) course choice, grades, as well as career aspirations and choices (e.g., Gaspard et al., 2019; Lazarides et al., 2020; Perez et al., 2019), supporting the synergistic perspective on expectancies and values.
Contextual Antecedents of Expectancies and Values
SEVT proposes multiple antecedents of expectancies and values (e.g., Eccles et al., 1983; Eccles & Wigfield, 2020), which range from more proximal factors such as individuals’
goals and prior experiences to more primal antecedents such as students’ characteristics (e.g., gender) as well as social and cultural influences (depicted at the far left side of the SEVT model; see Figure 1). As the focus of this dissertation is on the educational context and the role it plays in the unfolding of students’ expectancies and values, in the following, I focus my considerations on social and cultural influences and provide an overview of research findings on such primal antecedents of students’ expectancies and values. Thus, I briefly capture the parental environment and then outline evidence related to the educational environment.
Research on contextual influences on expectancies and values has provided extensive support for Eccles’ (2007) parent socialization model by proposing influences on children’s motivation and achievement. Empirical findings have revealed that family-level demographic characteristics, including family socioeconomic status or migration status (e.g., Benner et al., 2008; Fredricks et al., 2005), but also parent academic motivation, parent involvement with
and monitoring of children’s schoolwork, parenting styles such as autonomy support, and par-ent-child interactions predicted children’s development (e.g., Häfner et al., 2018; Raftery et al., 2012; for an overview, see also Wigfield et al., 2015). According to Eccles and Roeser (2015), characteristics that are typical of “good parenting” (e.g., autonomy support and a positive par-ent-child interaction) have a great deal in common with “good teaching,” and consequently, many of the assumed and tested associations between parenting style and student motivation might be transferrable to the educational context.
In fact, in several overview articles, Eccles and Wigfield compiled ample evidence on the relevance of the educational context with a particular focus on teaching behaviors for the socialization of student motivation (e.g., Eccles, 1993; Eccles & Roeser, 2015; Eccles &
Wigfield, 2020; Wigfield & Eccles, 2020). They listed social dimensions such as classroom instructions as well as the teacher-student relationship and classroom climate (i.e., comparable to parenting style and parent-child interactions) as relevant influences on student motivation (e.g., Wigfield et al., 2015). For instance, regarding classroom instructions, Wang and Eccles (2013) showed that students’ perceptions of the school environment (i.e., school structure and instructional behaviors such as teaching for relevance and teacher emotional support, as well as peer emotional support) positively predicted students’ academic self-concept and values, which were subsequently linked to their behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. By and large, however, such work was often not grounded in SEVT (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020), even though SEVT itself offers rich concepts regarding the centrality of the educational context for the unfolding of students’ expectancies and values. This is not to imply that no research has taken place in this respect—on the contrary, research on the association between the educa-tional context and student motivation is plentiful (e.g., Reeve et al., 2002; Stroet et al., 2013;
Wentzel, 2009, see also Section 1.2.1), although most of it has been embedded in other moti-vation or educational theories (e.g., in self-determination theory; Deci & Ryan, 1985; but see, e.g., Eccles, 2012; Lazarides, Dietrich, et al., 2019; Wang & Eccles, 2013). Following Eccles and Wigfield’s own references in SEVT (see also Section 1.1.1) and following recommenda-tions from Pintrich (2003), it might be necessary to link motivation theories to each other to gain a better theoretical understanding of motivation and its antecedents. Such an understand-ing could facilitate substantial empirical investigations into the ontogeny of motivation. Thus, in the next section, I present self-determination theory, control-value theory, and interest theo-ries with the aim to enrich SEVT perspectives on the ontogeny and socialization of expectan-cies and values in the educational context.