TY - GEN
T1 - Exploring changes in computer science students' implicit theories of intelligence across the semester
AU - Flanigan, Abraham E.
AU - Peteranetz, Markeya S.
AU - Shell, Duane F.
AU - Soh, Leen Kiat
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant nos. 1431874 and 1122956.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 ACM.
PY - 2015/7/9
Y1 - 2015/7/9
N2 - Our study was based on exploring CS1 students' implicit theories of intelligence. Referencing Dweck and Leggett's [5] framework for implicit theories of intelligence, we investigated (1) how students' implicit theories changed over the course of a semester, (2) how these changes differed as a function of course enrollment and students' self-regulation profiles, and (3) whether or not implicit theories predicted standardized course grades and performance on a computational thinking knowledge test. For all students, there were significant increases in entity theory (fixed mindset) and significant decreases in incremental theory (growth mindset) across the semester. However, results showed that students had higher scores for incremental than entity theory of intelligence at both the beginning and end of the semester. Furthermore, both incremental and entity theory, but not semester change in intelligence theory, differed based on students' self-regulation profiles. Also, semester change in entity theory differed across courses. Finally, students' achievement outcomes were weakly predicted by their implicit theories of intelligence. Implications for student motivation and retention in CS and other STEM courses are also discussed.
AB - Our study was based on exploring CS1 students' implicit theories of intelligence. Referencing Dweck and Leggett's [5] framework for implicit theories of intelligence, we investigated (1) how students' implicit theories changed over the course of a semester, (2) how these changes differed as a function of course enrollment and students' self-regulation profiles, and (3) whether or not implicit theories predicted standardized course grades and performance on a computational thinking knowledge test. For all students, there were significant increases in entity theory (fixed mindset) and significant decreases in incremental theory (growth mindset) across the semester. However, results showed that students had higher scores for incremental than entity theory of intelligence at both the beginning and end of the semester. Furthermore, both incremental and entity theory, but not semester change in intelligence theory, differed based on students' self-regulation profiles. Also, semester change in entity theory differed across courses. Finally, students' achievement outcomes were weakly predicted by their implicit theories of intelligence. Implications for student motivation and retention in CS and other STEM courses are also discussed.
KW - CS1
KW - Implicit learning theories
KW - Profiling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84959303550&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/2787622.2787722
DO - 10.1145/2787622.2787722
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84959303550
T3 - ICER 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
SP - 161
EP - 168
BT - ICER 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 11th Annual ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER 2015
Y2 - 9 August 2015 through 13 August 2015
ER -