Exploring How Holistic Teaching and Institutional Support Relate to Community College STEM Students’ Momentum and Self-Efficacy in Career-Relevant Competencies

This study investigates how holistic teaching practices and institutional support at community colleges shape science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students’ momentum and self-efficacy in career-relevant competencies. Using survey data from three community colleges, we apply structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess these relationships while accounting for institutional variation using multi-group analysis. Our findings demonstrate that holistic teaching practices are positively associated with students’ curricular, cognitive, and meta-cognitive momentum, indicating that integrated, supportive classroom instruction contributes to sustained engagement and self-regulated learning in STEM pathways. Holistic teaching practices also show a marginal positive relationship with career readiness self-efficacy and professional and interpersonal self-efficacy, with cognitive and meta-cognitive momentum mediating these associations. In contrast, institutional support is not related to students’ momentum but is positively associated with professional and interpersonal self-efficacy, which may point to its role in shaping broader skill development independent of short-term academic engagement. These findings suggest that holistic teaching practices and institutional support differentially contribute to students’ academic momentum and career-related self-efficacy, which highlights the importance of coordinated efforts across classroom and institutional levels within the broader STEM ecosystem in fostering both short-term engagement and long-term professional competencies among diverse community college STEM learners.