The impact of students’ STEM capacities on science achievement in six Asian countries
Abstract
Curiosity, creative self-efficacy, and critical thinking are increasingly recognized as critical psychological capacities that drive science learning and achievement. Curiosity motivates exploration and inquiry, creative self-efficacy enables innovative problem-solving, and critical thinking supports evidence-based reasoning, all essential for success in STEM education. This study examines how these capacities relate to science achievement across six Asian education systems selected to represent diverse performance levels in PISA 2022: high-performing (Singapore, Macao-China), medium-performing (Vietnam, Mongolia), and low-performing (Philippines, Indonesia) systems. Drawing on 44,689 students nested within 1,181 schools, multi-item indices were constructed from PISA questionnaire data, showing acceptable-to-strong reliability (curiosity α = 0.65; creative self-efficacy α = 0.81; critical thinking α = 0.69). Weighted mixed-effects models accounting for school-level clustering (ICC = 0.301–0.351) were estimated separately for each of ten plausible values and combined using Rubin’s rules. Across the pooled analytic sample, curiosity showed a significant negative within-school association with science achievement (β = −13.225, 95% CI [− 17.634, − 8.816]), while creative self-efficacy demonstrated a positive within-school relationship (β = 6.916, 95% CI [2.543, 11.290]) and critical thinking a modest non-significant positive association (β = 4.110, 95% CI [− 0.672, 8.892]) after adjusting for socioeconomic background and demographics. Country-level analyses revealed curiosity was consistently negative across all six systems (β range: −8.771 to − 19.306), creative self-efficacy was context-dependent, and critical thinking showed variable patterns. Findings reveal that the within-school influence of STEM-related dispositions on science achievement is shaped by school-level contextual factors and highlight the importance of institutional conditions in moderating how psychological capacities translate into academic performance across diverse educational systems.