To address the seven guiding questions posed for authors of articles in this special issue, we begin by discussing the development (in the late 1970s-early 1980s) of Eccles' expectancy-value theory of achievement choice (EEVT), a theory developed to explain the cultural phenomenon of why girls were less likely to participate in STEM courses and…

The present research aimed to uncover individual differences that can be used to predict, at the start of a course, performance difficulties in female students of an understudied population who are at the beginning of their academic journey. Measures of active and passive procrastination and general self-efficacy were collected at the start of the…

Academic entitlement (AE) is the expectation of academic success without the recognition, exercised through thought and action, of personal responsibility for attaining that success. In the present exploratory study, we examined the extent to which AE is present in female college students enrolled in Arabic culture and religious courses at a…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a gender-based learning environment fosters academic success for female students. This study was, also, meant to determine if the socioeconomic status (SES) and race of females was a predicting factor for the academic success of females enrolled in single gender learning environments in comparison to…

Substantial gender equity gaps in postsecondary degree completion persist within many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, and these disparities have not narrowed during the 21st century. Various explanations of this phenomenon have been offered; one possibility that has received limited attention is that the…

African American, female, first-generation students face unique social and academic challenges due to their triple minority status of being Black, female, and first-generation and often perceiving low social support. The problem this study addressed is the role that self-efficacy and social support play for this group of students is insufficiently…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the qualifying cumulative grade point average (C-GPA) and grit in engineering students compared with African American female engineering students, who qualify to take upper-level courses in engineering at a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in a Southern state.…

For years, a popular explanation for women choosing to abandon studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been their lack of aptitude. This study challenged that notion by integrating theories of cognitive style, academic emotion, self-efficacy, and motivation to explain students' academic achievement and perseverance…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of cognitive and non-cognitive factors on the academic achievement of female veteran students in a four-year university. Specifically, this research was interested in the influence of High School Grade Point Average (GPA), standardized test scores: Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and American…

Few studies have assessed the particular relationships between students' emotional well-being, both positive and negative and their learning. This study followed a cohort of mature students through their first semester at university. Four dimensions of emotional well-being were captured (enthusiasm, contentment, anxiety and depression) at three…

The present study investigated how spirituality, peer connections, and social integration relate to academic resiliency, academic self-efficacy, academic integration, and institutional commitment of college students who identify as female. A sample of 372 undergraduates (ages 18-26) at a Catholic University completed Mapworks survey containing…

Within the context of Pintrich's self-regulated learning model, recent reviews of the literature show that motivational factors are the strongest predictors of academic performance. Even so, gaps remain in terms of which goal orientation constructs area most strongly related to performance, and whether academic self-efficacy is involved in such…

For decades, researchers have examined the issues related to broadening the participation, retention, and success of individuals underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, there is very limited data on one group of underrepresented individuals--Black women--who over time have become an increasingly…

The article attempts to answer the question why females prefer humanities/social studies, whereas males opt for technology/science. For this purpose, the study majors selected by 445 females and 431 males were linked by logit functions with: (1) parents' and (2) teachers' expectancies, (3) students' self-expectancies, (4) their self-concepts of…

Sexualized gender stereotypes (SGS) include the belief that girls should singularly prioritize their sexualized attractiveness for the attention and approval of boys. By elementary school, boys and girls perceive girls' sexualized attractiveness to be incompatible with intelligence and competence. In the current 2-year study, we examined whether…