Jalisha Braxton: Exploring the Academic Attitudes & Beliefs of Students in College Preparation Programs
The attitudes and beliefs students hold about what it takes to be successful in school have been shown to influence student motivation and achievement. Interventions designed to target student attitudes and beliefs may therefore be beneficial for programs that aim to prepare students from underrepresented backgrounds for college and career success. However, little is known about the extent to which such programs are already influencing student attitudes and beliefs. In the proposed project, we plan to partner with two college preparation programs to explore their impact on student attitudes and beliefs about academics. Students in these programs will complete a battery of surveys to assess their academic attitudes and beliefs at three time points: 1) before the beginning of the program’s upcoming summer session, 2) at the end of the summer session, and 3) a year after the summer session. Students will also complete standardized reading and math assessments at these time points to measure changes in their math and reading abilities. Additionally, student outcomes in the form of grades and career interests will be collected for the school year immediately preceding the summer session and the school year directly following the summer session. This project also aims to train staff of college preparation programs on how to measure student attitudes and beliefs on their own. This training will enable the programs to continue measuring the attitudes and beliefs of their students and provide targeted curriculum to their students in subsequent years. Findings and efforts from this project have the potential to inform research on how to make college preparation programs more effective at preparing students for college success.
