Connections Between Instructor Messages and Undergraduate Students' Changing Personal Theories About Education

ABSTRACT

Students' personal theories about education change as students gather new evidence about intelligence, learning, and knowledge. The present study investigated whether college instructors' play a role in changing students' personal theories with the messages professors send in the classroom. Students (N = 162) and instructors (N = 15) of undergraduate-level math and science summer courses completed surveys assessing personal theories about education and the frequency of messages related to educational beliefs. Multilevel models found that both between-class and within-class differences in reported messages corresponded with students' personal beliefs at the end of the course. Instructors' personal theories were generally not predictive of students' personal theories, and students' initial personal theories predicted the messages they remembered hearing.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom messages
• classroom climate
• development
• epistemic beliefs
• personal theories
• theories of intelligence

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by scholarship to Michael Barger from the Duke University Graduate School. I thank my committee members and advisors (Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia, Rick Hoyle, Mark Leary, Makeba Wilbourn, and Jeff Greene) for their support and advice in conducting the research. I also thank Eva Pomerantz for her feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.

This research is based on the doctoral dissertation of the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Graduate School, Duke University, Graduate Student Summer Fellowship.