Self-efficacy is an important measure in science education as it is predictive of persistence and success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and is an influential factor in students’ decisions to major in STEM fields. It is unclear what effect active teaching strategies have on students’ self-efficacy, which is typically measured with a pretest at the beginning of the semester and a post-test at the end of the semester. To better understand what happens to self-efficacy over the course of an actively taught physics class, in addition to the typical pretest and post-test, we used a reflective pretest. At the end of the semester, we asked students to reflect on their abilities at the beginning of the semester and we compared this “reflective” self-efficacy to both their presemester and postsemester self-efficacy. We found that students’ reflective self-efficacy was systematically lower than their self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester. Interviews reveal that discrepancies between presemester self-efficacy and reflective self-efficacy are the result of response-shift bias. Because of students’ limited experience with active learning environments, response-shift bias makes it difficult to accurately measure students’ change in self-efficacy over the semester of an actively taught physics course. We conclude that reflective pretests in combination with interviews can help educators and researchers understand if changes in self-efficacy are being masked by response-shift bias.

中文翻译：

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在积极教授的物理课程中学生自我效能感的反应转变偏差

自我效能感是科学教育中的一个重要衡量标准，因为它可以预测科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 课程的坚持和成功，并且是学生决定主修 STEM 领域的影响因素。目前尚不清楚主动教学策略对学生的自我效能感有何影响，学生的自我效能感通常通过学期初的预测试和学期末的后测试来衡量。为了更好地了解在积极教授的物理课过程中自我效能感会发生什么变化，除了典型的预测试和后测试之外，我们还使用了反思性预测试。在学期结束时，我们要求学生在学期开始时反思自己的能力，并将这种“反思性”自我效能感与他们学期前和学期后的自我效能感进行比较。我们发现学生的反思自我效能感总体低于学期初的自我效能感。访谈显示，学前自我效能感和反思自我效能感之间的差异是反应转变偏差的结果。由于学生在主动学习环境中的经验有限，反应转变偏差使得很难准确测量学生在积极教授的物理课程的整个学期中自我效能的变化。我们的结论是，反思性预测试与访谈相结合可以帮助教育工作者和研究人员了解自我效能的变化是否被反应转变偏差所掩盖。