Department of Psychology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.
Biology Instructional Office, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2022 Dec;21(4):ar82. doi: 10.1187/cbe.22-07-0143.
Mindset interventions, which shift students' beliefs about classroom experiences, have shown promise for promoting diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Psychologists have emphasized the importance of customizing these interventions to specific courses, but there is not yet a protocol for doing so. We developed a protocol for creating customized "peer-modeled" mindset interventions that elicit advice from former students in videotaped interviews. In intervention activities, clips from these interviews, in which the former students' stories model the changes in thinking about challenge and struggle that helped them succeed in a specific course, are provided to incoming life sciences students. Using this protocol, we developed a customized intervention for three sections of Introductory Biology I at a large university and tested it in a randomized controlled trial ( = 917). The intervention shifted students' attributions for struggle in the class away from a lack of potential to succeed and toward the need to develop a better approach to studying. The intervention also improved students' approaches to studying and sense of belonging and had promising effects on performance and persistence in biology. Effects were pronounced among first-generation college students and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority students, who have been historically underrepresented in the STEM fields.
思维模式干预措施改变了学生对课堂体验的信念，这为促进科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的多样性展示出了前景。心理学家强调了针对特定课程定制这些干预措施的重要性，但目前还没有这样做的方案。我们制定了一个方案，用于创建定制的“同伴模型”思维模式干预措施，从以前的学生的视频采访中获取建议。在干预活动中，向生命科学专业的新生提供了采访片段剪辑，这些片段展示了他们在特定课程中思考挑战和困难的转变，从而帮助他们取得成功。利用这个方案，我们为一所大型大学的三个《普通生物学 I》课程制定了一个定制的干预措施，并在随机对照试验中进行了测试（n = 917）。该干预措施改变了学生对课堂上挣扎的归因，不再认为缺乏成功的潜力，而是认为需要发展更好的学习方法。干预措施还改善了学生的学习方法和归属感，对生物学的表现和坚持有积极的影响。对于第一代大学生和代表性不足的少数族裔学生来说，效果更为显著，他们在历史上一直代表不足于 STEM 领域。
