Changes in children's self-competence and values: gender and domain differences across grades one through twelve.

By J. Jacobs, Stephanie T. Lanza, D. Osgood, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, Allan Wigfield. Child Development, 2002

1,814 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study extended previous research on changes in children's self-beliefs by documenting domain-specific growth trajectories for 761 children across grades 1 through 12 in a longitudinal study of perceptions of self-competence and task values. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to (1) describe changes in beliefs across childhood and adolescence within the domains of mathematics, language arts, and sports; (2) examine the impact of changes in competence beliefs on changes in values over time in the same domains; and (3) describe gender differences in mean levels and trajectories of change in competence beliefs and values. The most striking finding across all domains was that self-perceptions of competence and subjective task values declined as children got older, although the extent and rate of decline varied across domains. For example, in language arts, competence beliefs declined rapidly during the elementary school years, but then leveled off or increased to some extent; whereas the decline in self-competence beliefs in sports accelerated during the high school years. Significant gender differences in beliefs were found in most domains; however, the gender differences in developmental trajectories appeared to be domain specific rather than global. Importantly, the gender differences between boys and girls did not systematically increase with age, as predicted by some socialization perspectives. Adding competence beliefs as an explanatory variable to the model for task values revealed that changes in competence beliefs accounted for much of the age-related decline in task values. In addition, competence beliefs accounted for most of the gender differences in task values for language arts and sports.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Safety Research, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/acf3285a44a0b43728f60fb3035270533b7ec313

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Adolescents’ Perceptions of Masculine and Feminine Values in Sport and Physical Education: A Study of Gender Differences (2005, background): “The boys not only valued being good in sport more than girls did, as shown in previous research (Eccles & Harold, 1991; Eccles et al., 1993; Fredricks & Eccles, 2002; Jacobs et al., 2002; Wigfield et al., 1997), but they also valued Appearance strength, Endurance, Strength, and Masculinity signifi”
Task-values across subject domains: A gender comparison using a person-centered approach (2011, background): “In the area of languages and literacy, girls were found to place higher values on languages and literacy than boys (Durik et al., 2006; Jacobs et al., 2002).”
Expectancy-value theory: retrospective and prospective (2010, background): “Jacobs et al. (2002) assessed a combined task values that contained items from all three aspects of value defined by Wigfield and Eccles (2000).”
Students’ engagement profiles in mathematics according to learning environment dimensions: Developing an evidence base for best practice in mathematics education (2017, background): “…longitudinal studies of declining interests and self-concepts (e.g., Watt, 2004 in Australia; Frenzel et al., 2010; Nagy et al., 2010 in Germany; Jacobs et al., 2002 in the United States) and experienced mastery goals, due to changes in instructional and assessment practices as students move…”
Using the Social Cognitive Theory Framework to Chart Gender Differences in the Developmental Trajectory of STEM Self-Efficacy in Science and Engineering Students (2020, background): “In one such 12-year longitudinal study of the development of self-efficacy from grades 1 to 12, Jacobs et al. (2002) found that there was an initial gap in mathematics self-efficacy at grade 1 with boys reporting higher self-efficacy than girls; this gap narrowed linearly until no gap was observed…”
Team Sports Achievement and Self-Esteem Development Among Urban Adolescent Girls (2004, methodology): “Although boys’ athletic interests and self-evaluations also decline during adolescence, girls consistently express less interest in athletics and report lower athletic self-evaluations than boys (DuBois et al., 2000; Fredricks & Eccles, 2002; Jacobs et al., 2002).”