My project will be focused on strategies for building self-efficacy in low income university students and the ways in which increased self-efficacy can positively impact academic performance, program persistence, student experience, and overall wellbeing. Academic culture creates an environment where imposter syndrome and self-doubt thrive. Particularly for low income students, there are many unwritten rules of academia, a lack of transparency around research, publishing, and job search processes, and other forms of gatekeeping. There is also often lacking representation from underrepresented faculty and staff at higher education.

Self determination theory, which synthesized decades of research to argue that people are fundamentally seeking autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and that they thrive in environments that enable them to maximize these qualities. A university culture that creates interventions, policies, and practices that enhance belonging during the transition into university and provides opportunities for students gain experiences that build competence and opportunities to connect with others, may increase students’ self efficacy and therefore influence students’ choices related to engagement, the effort they expend on tasks, and their ability to persist. In sum, students’ increased self efficacy results in productive thoughts, feelings, and actions that culminate in successful outcomes ( Muñoz & Jojoa, 2015).

“To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times and rise eight.” –Angela Duckworth, 2016

My work will explore the difference between self-efficacy and imposter syndrome, the ways in which self doubt can be beneficial to students, narratives in higher education (such as bootstrapping, grittiness, meritocracy, and self reliance) that minimize systemic issues standing in the way of student success, and practices that institutions can implement to cultivate self efficacy in students.

Citations:

Cohen, E. D., & McConnell, W. R. (2019). Fear of fraudulence: Graduate school program environments and the imposter phenomenon. Sociological Quarterly, 60(3), 457–478. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2019.1580552

Ballesteros Muñoz, L., & Tutistar Jojoa, S. (2014). How setting goals enhances learners’ self-efficacy beliefs in listening comprehension. HOW, 21(1), 42-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.21.1.14.

Pákozdy, C., Askew, J., Dyer, J. et al. The imposter phenomenon and its relationship with self-efficacy, perfectionism and happiness in university students. Curr Psychol 43, 5153–5162 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04672-4

Tate, K. A., Fouad, N. A., Marks, L. R., Young, G., Guzman, E., & Williams, E. G. (2015). Underrepresented first-generation, low-income college students’ pursuit of a graduate education: Investigating the influence of self-efficacy, coping efficacy, and family influence. Journal of Career Assessment, 23(3), 427–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072714547498