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Who perceives they're smarter? Exploring the influence of student characteristics on student academic self‐concept in physiology
Author(s) -
Brownell Sara,
Cooper Katelyn,
Krieg Anna
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2018.32.1_supplement.lb227
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , psychology , class (philosophy) , academic achievement , perception , mathematics education , affect (linguistics) , self concept , social psychology , biology , computer science , paleontology , communication , artificial intelligence , neuroscience
Academic self‐concept is one's perception of his or her ability in an academic domain and is formed by comparing oneself to other students. As college biology classrooms transition from lecturing to active learning, students interact more with each other and are likely comparing themselves more to other students in the class. Student characteristics can impact students' academic self‐concept, however this has been unexplored in the context of undergraduate biology. In this study, we explored whether student characteristics can affect academic self‐concept in the context of an active‐learning college physiology course. Using a survey, students self‐reported how smart they perceived themselves in the context of physiology relative to the whole class and relative to their groupmate‐ the student they worked most closely with in class. Using linear regression, we found that males and native English speakers had significantly higher academic self‐concept relative to the whole class compared with females and non‐native English speakers. Using logistic regression, we found that males had significantly higher academic self‐concept relative to their groupmate compared with females. Using constant comparison methods, we identified nine factors that students reported influenced how they determined whether they are more or less smart than their groupmate. Finally, we found that students were more likely to report participating more than their groupmate if they had a higher academic self‐concept. These findings suggest that student characteristics can influence students' academic self‐concept, which in turn may influence their participation in small group discussion and their academic achievement in active learning classes. Support or Funding Information NONE This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .