– There was a significant effect of the experimental intervention on course-taking, such that adolescents whose parents received the intervention took more MS in 12th grade, compared with controls.
– There was an indirect effect of personal connections on STEM course-taking through adolescent’s interest.- More years of mother’s education were associated with higher perceptions of adolescents’ math ability.
– Neither mothers’ years of education nor mothers’ perception of adolescents’ math ability predicted number of conversations between mothers and adolescents or personal connections articulated in the interviews.
– Mothers with more years of education generated more elaborated responses in their interview.
– There was a significant interaction between number of conversations and elaboration, such that the highest level of interest occurred with high elaboration and few conversations.
– Adolescents whose parents received the intervention reported more UV in 10th grade than those whose parents were in the control group.
– Higher levels of interest in 10th grade predicted more STEM courses taken in 12th grade.
– There was a significant interaction between elaboration and number of conversations such that the highest levels of course-taking were achieved either with the combination of high elaboration and fewer conversations, or less elaboration but more conversations.
2016 - The Role of Mothers’ Communication in Promoting Motivation for Math and Science Course-Taking in High School
This research is rooted in expectancy-value theory and augmented with the parent socialization model, as well as Rogoff’s theorizing about the importance of the social environment for children’s thinking.
The sample comprised families participating in the longitudinal Wisconsin Study of Families and Work (WSFW; for details of recruitment, see Hyde, Klein, Essex, & Clark, 1995). The current sample consisted of students who attended ninth grade in the 2006–2007 academic year, and their mothers. Adolescents attended 108 different high schools. In total, 136 mothers were interviewed. However, six participants were excluded from analyses because they did not complete the conversations interview or did not answer a majority of the interview questions, leaving 130 mother-adolescent pairs in the analyses reported here.
At the end of ninth grade (June 2007), mothers were interviewed by phone about the utility of six STEM subjects: algebra, geometry, calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics. Mothers were asked how they would talk with their teen about the usefulness of the topics. Questionnaire data were collected from mothers and from adolescents in the summer following 10th grade. At the end of 12th grade, high-school transcripts were collected from the students’ schools and were coded for STEM course-taking. In addition, because this study was embedded within a larger longitudinal project, a measure of the mother’s perception of the adolescent’s mathematical ability was available from seventh grade.
Starting in October 2007 (10th grade), an intervention designed to increase parental knowledge regarding STEM UV was administered to approxi-mately half the participants. Intervention materials
identified potential connections between STEM fields and adolescents’ current and future goals, as well as techniques for parents to use in communicating with their adolescent. Families were randomly assigned to the intervention group or a control
group.
Variables: Communication measures (number of conversations, elaboration of utility value (UV), and personal connections about UV); Mother’s perception of adolescent’s math ability (in 7th grade); Adolescent’s STEM interest and UV (summer following 10th grade, “I think [topic] is interesting” was asked for algebra, geometry, biology, chemistry, and physics); STEM courses taken (from high school transcripts)