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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Educational Psychology
doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1033100

Differential Relations Among Expectancy, Task Value, Engagement, and Academic Performance: The Role of Generation Status

Ordene V. Edwards1* and Ting Dai2
  • 1Kennesaw State University, United States
  • 2University of Illinois at Chicago, United States
Provisionally accepted:
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

We investigated differences in domain-general expectancy, value, and engagement in school by generation status and how the relationship among these constructs and academic performance differ by generation status. A total of 573 college students enrolled in introductory psychology courses participated in the study. We discovered that expectancy differed significantly by generation status, with first-generation college students (FGCS) reporting higher expectancy than continuing-generation college students (CGCS). There were no differences in task value. Multigroup structural equation modeling revealed that the effect of expectancy-value motivation on behavioral engagement was similar across groups, but its effect on cognitive engagement was greater for the FGCS than for the CGCS. For both groups, expectancy impacted academic performance via behavioral engagement. Finally, neither expectancy-value motivation nor cognitive engagement directly predicted academic performance for either group. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: First-Generation College Students, continuing-generation college students, situated expectancy-value theory, School motivation, school engagement

Received:31 Aug 2022; Accepted: 14 Dec 2022.

Copyright: © 2022 Edwards and Dai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Dr. Ordene V. Edwards, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, United States