Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
Department of Educational Psychology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 29;116(5):1553-1558. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1808589116. Epub 2019 Jan 14.
Educational attainment is one lever that can increase opportunity for economically disadvantaged families-especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Unfortunately, students from lower-income backgrounds often perform poorly and fail high school STEM courses, which are a necessary step in pursuing fast-growing and lucrative STEM careers, graduating high school, and matriculating to college. We reasoned that, because high school STEM courses often use high-stakes tests to gauge performance, and such tests can be especially stressful for lower-income students, interventions that help students regulate their negative emotions during tests should reduce the achievement gap between higher- and lower-income students. In a large-scale ( = 1,175) field experiment conducted in ninth grade science classrooms, students were asked to complete a control exercise, or they were given the opportunity to complete an exercise to help them regulate their worries and reinterpret their anxious arousal before their tests. We found significant benefits of emotion regulation activities for lower-income students in terms of their science examination scores, science course passing rate, and students' attitudes toward examination stress, suggesting that students' emotions are one factor that impacts performance. For example, 39% of lower-income students failed the course in the control group compared with only 18% of students failing the course if they participated in the emotion regulation interventions-a reduction in course failure rate by half. Our work underscores the crucial importance of targeting students' emotions during impactful points in their academic trajectories for improving STEM preparedness and enhancing overall academic success.
教育程度是增加经济劣势家庭机会的一个杠杆，尤其是在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域。不幸的是，来自低收入背景的学生往往表现不佳，无法通过高中 STEM 课程，而这些课程是追求快速增长和高利润的 STEM 职业、高中毕业和进入大学的必要步骤。我们推断，由于高中 STEM 课程通常使用高风险测试来衡量表现，而这些测试对低收入学生来说可能特别有压力，因此帮助学生在考试期间调节负面情绪的干预措施应该会缩小高收入和低收入学生之间的成绩差距。在一项大规模（= 1175）的现场实验中，我们在九年级的科学课堂上进行了实验，要求学生完成控制练习，或者有机会在考试前完成一项帮助他们调节担忧和重新解释焦虑唤醒的练习。我们发现，对于低收入学生来说，情绪调节活动在科学考试成绩、科学课程通过率和学生对考试压力的态度方面都有显著的好处，这表明学生的情绪是影响表现的一个因素。例如，在对照组中，有 39%的低收入学生没有通过该课程，而如果他们参加了情绪调节干预，只有 18%的学生没有通过该课程——课程失败率降低了一半。我们的工作强调了在学生学术轨迹的关键时刻针对学生情绪进行干预的重要性，这对于提高 STEM 准备水平和增强整体学业成功至关重要。
