New papers published by Meredith Henry

Former REACH Lab postdoc Meredith Henry, now a Lecturer of psychology at Georgia State University, has published, not one, but TWO new papers over the course of the last year that will help researchers study how students approach challenges and respond to failures in STEM settings.

As the program manager and lead postdoctoral researcher for the Factors affecting Learning, Attitudes, and Mindsets in Education Network, Meredith has long been interested in how students develop resilience as scientists and how we, as instructors, can support this development during their undergraduate careers. Part of understanding the development of resilience involves understanding students' attitudes going in to challenges (are they afraid of failing, why?) and characterizing whether or not their responses to failure and challenge are productive. Knowing these things will help us to understand how to better support students when they do encounter difficulties through which they need to be resilient. 

With these goals in mind, Meredith set out to find and explore the validity of survey instruments that could help us - instructors, researchers, and administrators - to better understand and characterize these processes. She started by exploring the potential of the PFAI or Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory as an instrument to investigate STEM students' fear of failure. Through interviews, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, she discovered that many of the dimensions measured on the PFAI (e.g., fear of shame and embarrassment) were salient for STEM students and could be measured using items from the original instrument. She went on to investigate whether the Brief COPE might be useful for measuring students’ coping responses. This instrument, along with a few added items from earlier versions, can measure a variety of styles and behaviors and can serve as a useful tool for those wishing to explore challenge-engaging vs. challenge-avoiding coping behaviors.

Her work was published in the International Journal of STEM Education: Quantifying fear of failure in STEM: modifying and evaluating the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) for use with STEM undergraduates and Coping behavior versus coping style: characterizing a measure of coping in undergraduate STEM contexts.