PREDICTING STUDENT INTENT TO PERSIST IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY COURSES

Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) careers have been touted as critical to the success of our nation and also provide important opportunities for access and equity of underrepresented minorities (URM’s). Community colleges serve a diverse population and a large number of undergraduates currently enrolled in college, they are well situated to help address the increasing STEM workforce demands. Geoscience is a discipline that draws great interest, but has very low representation of URM’s as majors.

What factors influence a student’s decision to major in the geosciences and are community college students different from research universities in what factors influence these decisions? In an effort to predict a student’s intent to persist in introductory geology based on student expectancy for success in their geology class, math self-concept, and interest in the content, structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied. The targeted population was introductory geology students participating in the Geoscience Affective Research NETwork (GARNET) project, a national sampling of students in enrolled in introductory geology courses.

Results from SEM analysis indicated that interest was the primary predictor in a students intent to persist in the geosciences for both community college and research university students. In addition, self-efficacy appeared to be mediated by interest within these models. Classroom pedagogy impacted how much interest was needed to predict intent to persist: as classrooms became more student centered, less interest was required to predict intent to persist. Lastly, math self-concept did not predict student intent to persist in the geosciences, however, it did share variance with self-efficacy and control of learning beliefs, indicating it may play a moderating effect on student interest and self-efficacy particularly with community college students.

Implications of this work are that while community college students and research university students are different in demographics and content preparation, student-centered instruction continues to be the best way to support student’s interest in the sciences across all institutions.