Investigating the Relations between Students' Chemistry Mindset, Self-Efficacy, and Goal Orientation in General and Organic Chemistry Lecture Courses

Students' view of intelligence (i.e., their mindset beliefs) has been found to be related to their self-efficacy and goal orientations as well as to influence their course outcomes. Comparisons of students' chemistry mindset between different groups found that organic chemistry I students held more of a growth mindset than general chemistry I students at the beginning of a term. Additionally, men tended to hold more growth mindset beliefs than women. Given these differences, structural equation modeling was used to explore the relations between students' mindset, self-efficacy, and goal orientations, along with their relation to achievement outcomes within a course. An indirect effect of mindset on summative achievement was found to be mediated through performance-avoidance goals, whereas the relation between self-efficacy and summative achievement was mediated through performance-approach, mastery-avoidance, and performance-avoidance goal orientations. While mindset was not found to be directly or indirectly related to formative achievement outcomes, self-efficacy was found to have an indirect effect on formative achievement through mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goal orientations. Additionally, an interaction between mindset and self-efficacy was found to be related to performance-avoidance goals, as has been suggested in prior studies. These results point to the importance of mindset on achievement outcomes while also considering influences from self-efficacy and goal orientations. Future work is encouraged to investigate how these variables are related when they are measured throughout a term.