Scholastic excellence in applied medical sciences education at newly established saudi arabian universities: effect of students’ perceived intellectual ability and inquisitiveness

Introduction: Examination of students’ beliefs about themselves, or self-theories, may provide important insight into their behaviour and these results shall contribute to the body of knowledge demonstrating the utility of the motivational concepts for understanding health sciences students’ effort and achievement. This study shall examine the relationship between the students’ believes about their intelligence, their curiosity and inquisitiveness, and whether these adaptive personal beliefs are predictive of their academic achievements. Method:A Sample of 245 students were randomly selected from different colleges offering medical and health sciences courses from various newly established universities in Saudi Arabia. Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale and Curiosity and Exploratory Inventory were used for measuring the outcomes. Result:It was found that the incremental intelligence beliefs accounted for 25% of the variance in students’ course grades, F(3,563) = 40.98, p < .05, adj. R² = .31, whereas exploratory curiosity accounting for 13% and absorptive curiosity accounting for 8% of the total variance. Discussion: In our sample, the students’ incremental beliefs were significantly higher than their entity beliefs. Our results also showed that the students who believe intelligence is malleable are more likely to inquisitive behaviours; in our sample, the inquisitive behaviour were significantly positively associated with students’ course grade leading to excellence in academic performance.