College Readiness Beliefs and Behaviors of Adolescents in a Pre-College Access Program: An Extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior.

Abstract

Higher education policy-makers, practitioners and researchers increasingly seek to better understand interventions that reduce opportunity gaps faced by minority and low-income students across the PK-20 pipeline. Going beyond evaluation studies, this theory-driven dissertation provides new insight into key connections between social-cognitive motivation, active program participation and successful college readiness behaviors in the GEAR UP intervention. Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), these connections are investigated in three studies that focus on self-regulated learning behaviors critical for college preparation and readiness among low-income students. The first study examined the relationship between key TPB student strengths – attitudes, control beliefs, subjective norms and intentions – and GEAR UP participation. The second study investigated the reciprocal relationship between students’ GEAR UP participation and subsequent self-regulated learning attitudes, beliefs, norms and intentions. The third study explored whether systematic barriers (low parental education) moderated the association between TPB motivational strengths and GEAR UP participation.

Structural equation analysis of longitudinal (two-wave) panel survey data from a predominantly African American 8th and 9th grade sample provided several key findings. The first study revealed that strong control beliefs motivated active participation in GEAR UP. As hypothesized, behavioral intentions mediated this control belief-active participation relationship. The second study found a surprising inverse relationship between students’ active participation and subsequent attitudes toward self-regulated learning. This unexpected finding suggests that active GEAR UP college readiness activities (rigorous course and test preparations) exacerbate distressful orientations (attitudes) toward competitive self-regulated learning behaviors. The third study revealed that higher expectations of significant others (teachers, counselors, parents) increased active participation in GEAR UP for the lower-SES students but decreased active participation for higher-SES students. Overall, this TPB extension provides a better understanding of how low-income students translate social-cognitive motivational beliefs into self-regulated learning behavioral processes that promote college preparation and readiness. Findings suggest that successful pipeline interventions must pay greater attention to the social-psychological strengths that students bring to program settings, how such strengths effect and are effected by active program participation, and how these reciprocal relationships may differ for low-income students faced with systemic barriers. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications.