Supporting identity-based motivation: Next-year continuation effects of high-fidelity Pathways-to-Success

We document the next-year carryover effects on grades and risk of course failure (N=875) of Pathways-to-Success, a whole-class, teacher-trained, and teacher-led universal intervention. Structural equation modeling reveals that higher fidelity is associated with higher identity-based motivation. Through identity-based motivation, higher fidelity is associated with better 8th-grade academic outcomes, and through 8th-grade outcomes, 9th-grade outcomes. Providing support for the theorized process model, effects are robust across tools for coding and modeling the identity-based motivation construct. Pathways-to-Success supports school-focused identity-based motivation and hence, academic attainment, via activities that bolster students’ existing identity-based motivation in three ways. Activities help students see that they and their peers all (1) have skills and abilities to succeed in school this year and into the future, (2) imagine some future as an adult with school as the path to get there, and (3) interpret difficulties and setbacks as indicators of importance, not only of low odds or impossibility. Our results contribute to studies documenting the effects of Pathways-to-Success on 8th-grade outcomes by extending effects to 9th-grade and suggesting the robustness of the key mediating construct, increasing confidence in the effects and process model.