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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2012) |
Achievement motivation explains how people energize and direct their behavior to a work or task to realize their goals (Elliot, 1999).Achievement motivation explores the incentives of people while attaining a task, or setting a goal with two components: mastery-performance orientation and approach- avoidance (Fryer& Elliot, 2007). The first orientation, mastery-performance motivation, suggests that people can have different reasons while attaining a task. While some people can focus on improving their knowledge or skills, others can focus on comparing their ability with their peers. The second orientation, approach-avoidance motivation, suggests that there are two types of motives that make people direct their energy to behavior. Approach motivation, refers to being motivated to strive a positive possibility such as a success, whereas avoidance motivation refers to being motivated to avoid a negative possibility, such as a failure (Elliot& Shledon, 1997; Elliot, 1999). Combining these two orientations, researchers (Elliot& Harackiewicz, 1996; Elliot & Church, 1997; Elliot& McGregor, 2001) developed the current version of achievement goal theory. Accordingly, they offered 2× 2 form of achievement goals namely, mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals.
Relevant literature suggests that there is a need for examining the relationship between achievement goals and socio-cultural factors like familial influences (Maehr, 2001). According to this point of view, people’s experiences in their surroundings can lead them to adapt any kind of achievement goals (Nicholls, 1989; Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Kaplan & Maehr, 2002; Friedel, Cortina, Turner and Midgley, 2007). In line with these ideas, the overarching aim of this study is to investigate whether perceptions of parents’ approach goals, both mastery approach and performance approach goals, direct students to adopt approach goals in science classes, or vice versa.
History of Achievement Goal Theory
Achievement goal theory was proposed in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (Elliot& Harackiewicz, 1996) to explain the reasons for achievement behaviors. Accordingly, achievement goal theorists focused their attention to determine why students engage in a task and why they want to succeed. Early research based on this theory suggested two kinds of achievement goals namely, mastery goals and performance goals. While mastery goals focus on self-improvement, learning and understanding, performance goals focus on demonstrating ability, or comparing one’s skills to others (Elliot& Harackiewicz, 1996; Elliot & Church, 1997; Pintrich, 2000; Linnenbrink& Pintrich, 2002; Pintrich, Conley & Kemper, 2003). At the beginning, these goals were proposed as approach oriented version of achievement motivation. While researchers named the focus on improving knowledge, or learning new things as mastery goals, they named the focus on getting the highest score or being a top student as performance goals. Later, researchers considered the second motive of achievement motivation namely, avoidance orientation. They asserted that people can adopt achievement goals not only to acquire positive stimuli, but also to avoid negative stimuli. For instance, while some students study their lessons to avoid the possibility of not learning, or not understanding the whole the subject, the others can study to avoid being the worst student, or looking stupid (Elliot & Church, 1997; Pintrich, 2000; Linnenbrink& Pintrich, 2002; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002 Pintrich, Conley& Kemper, 2003).
Although avoidance goals can be effective in some situations, they are mostly aimed to keep the existing situation, not to develop better ones. Since they only focus on avoiding failure, students with avoidance goals can miss some opportunities to be successful. In contrast, students with approach goals are aimed to improve the situation. Additionally, since they focus on positive opportunities, they are not likely to experience negative feelings like worry, or anxiety, than students with avoidance goals (Elliot, 2006). Besides, in general, approach goals are found be linked to adaptive outcomes such as better cognitive engagement, actual achievement and positive affect.
However, research on avoidance goal climates has had difficulty in making the approach-avoidance split (Murayama & Elliot, 2009) and because of the high correlation between approach and avoidance goals, some researchers defend that approach and avoidance goals cannot be differentiated (Roeser, 2004; Urdan, 2004a; Roeser, Peck, & Nasir, 2006; Urdan& Mestas, 2006). In addition, although some researchers suggested approach-avoidance distinction for achievement goals (both performance goals and mastery goals) (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), other researchers suggested that achievement goals may have different meanings for different cultures (Urdan, 2004b; Urdan& Mestas, 2006) because there is a variety of reasons for a student to adopt, achievement goals. Thus, it is not clear how students adopt the goals. In view of aforementioned reasons, this study decided not to focus on avoidance goals. In other words, this study aims at examining approach goals in an attempt to ultimately improve students’ achievement behaviors.
Nowadays, goal researchers begun to approach the theory from a different standpoint and suggested that individuals can adopt multiple goals simultaneously (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2000; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2000; Pintrich, 1999). However, in many studies mastery goals and performance goals are examined separately, ignoring the possible simultaneous existence of them (Midgley et al., 2001). However, as pointed out by Barron and Harackiewicz (2001) there may be several advantages of examining achievement goals from multiple goals perspective. Indeed, Barron and Harackiewicz identified advantages of investigating multiple goals in four patterns. An additive pattern suggests that mastery and performance goals can have positive effects on achievement related outcomes. Supporting this idea, Wolters et al. (1996) demonstrated that not only mastery goals but also performance goals have positive influence on students’ cognition. An interactive goal pattern suggests that apart from the independent effects, the interaction effect of mastery and performance goals can have positive effects on an achievement outcome. A specialized goal pattern suggests that mastery goals and performance goals have specialized effects on different outcomes. For instance, while mastery goals can have positive effects on students’ interest, performance goals can have positive effects on students’ performance (Harachiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot & Thrash, 2002). A selective goal pattern suggests that mastery or performance goals can be better in different situations. Accordingly, if students adopt both of the goals, they can focus on the most suitable one in a specific situation. Because, the previous research overlooked the examination of multiple goals and their consequences (Harachiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot & Thrash, 2002) and thus there is a need for further investigations from multiple goals perspective, the present study seeks to explore the achievement goals mainly based on the interactive goal pattern proposed by Barron and Harackiewicz (2001).
Perceived parent achievement goal emphasis
Parental influences on students’ academic performance and motivation has been a popular subject among researchers for many years. In fact, up to the present, considerable research was conducted to examine parental influences such as parenting style, educational level, or parental involvement on student achievement (Frome& Eccles, 1998), strategy use (Hoover-Dempsey, Bassler& Burow, 1995) and motivation (Gonzalez-DeHass, Willems,& Holbein, 2005). On the other hand, with the introduction of achievement goal theory, the goals that parents emphasize to their children become another interesting, but relatively neglected subject among researchers. The theory suggests that parents can emphasize either mastery approach goals, by focusing on improving knowledge, skills, or abilities, or performance approach goals, by focusing on showing abilities to others. The importance of the goals that parents emphasize to their children become more obvious when it is considered that students regard their parents’ attitudes and opinions about students’ abilities more than their own past performances (Eccles-Parsons, Adler and Kaczala, 1982).
Friedel, Hruda, and Midgley (2001) examined the relationship between students’ perceptions about their parents’ achievement goals and their personal achievement goals in mathematics. According to the results, students adopt mastery goals when they think their parents emphasize mastery goals. Similarly, when parents’ emphasize performance goals, students also tend to adopt performance goals. Moreover, Gonida, Kiosseoglou and Voulala (2007) investigated the relationship between students’ perceptions about their parents’ achievement goals and students’ personal achievement goals. Findings suggested that students’ mastery goals were predicted by mastery goals that parents emphasize and students’ performance goals were predicted by performance goals that parents emphasize. In another study, the same researchers, Gonida, Voulala, and Kiosseoglou (2009) investigated how perceived parent goals emphasis affects students’ adoption of achievement goals. The results of the study indicated that students’ perceptions of their parents’ goals were one of the predictor of students’ achievement goals. Namely, if students think that their parents want them to improve their skills, they tend to adopt mastery goals. In the same manner, if students think that their parents want them to demonstrate themselves, they tend to adopt performance goals, both approach and avoidance goals.
At this point, it is worth mentioning that the interactive goal pattern was also suggested at the contextual level (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2001; Linnenbrink, 2005). According to this view, students can perceive messages that emphasize both the importance of self-improvement and the relative success among peers from the people in their socio cultural environment (Linnenbrink, 2005; Turner, et. all, 2002; Turner, Meyer, Midgley, & Patrick, 2003 ). To be able to make suggestions to create a much effective socio-cultural environment in terms of perceived goal emphases, there is a need for taking the possible interaction effects of perceived goal emphases in socio-cultural contexts into account (Linnenbrink, 2005). For example, Turner et al. (2002) reported that emphasizing both mastery approach goals, and performance approach goals can be more facilitative than emphasizing only mastery goals. Similarly, Barron and Harackiewicz’ study (2001) revealed that emphasizing the combination of mastery and performance approach goals are more facilitative for students. Besides, the researchers reported that the effectiveness of the environments that emphasize multiple goals become superior in the absence of the awareness about personal goals. Moreover, Linnenbrink (2005) investigated the relation between contextual goals and achievement related outcomes such as help seeking, cognitive engagement, and achievement. According to the results, the most adaptive contextual goal form involves the simultaneous emphases of both mastery approach and performance approach goals. Based on these findings, the researchers in this research area recommended that socio cultural environment should focus on both learning and mastering new skills and competition for it. The point to consider here is that the competition should be about learning and mastering not ability. (Linnenbrink, 2005).
Although achievement goal theory highlight the importance of the goals emphasized by social cultural context, there are a few studies about the relationship between perceptions about parents achievement goals and students’ personal achievement goals (Kim, Schallert& Kim, 2010). Considering the fact that achievement goals are significantly related to a variety of affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002), there is a need for investigating the factors which are suggested to be significantly linked to achievement goals. Such studies can provide clues to help students adopt achievement goals facilitative to their learning. Accordingly, this study aims at examining students’ personal achievement goals in relation to perceived parents’ goal emphases using interactive goal pattern approach (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2001). Because adoption of achievement goals can change from domain to domain, (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2000), the study was also narrow down and focused specifically on science with an ultimate aim of improving science education. Indeed, Chen and Pajares (2010) suggested that formative years’ of students’ academic careers should be examined to keep them in the field of science and technology. Because ample research has demonstrated that students’ achievement goals are related to their learning and achievement (Huang, 2012), students’ decision to attend science-related majors in the university and their career choices can be influenced by their achievement goals. In addition, in today’s world, one of the main goals of science education is to develop scientifically literate individuals who understands and reflects on scientific knowledge and explanations, actively involves in science and produces scientific evidences. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science Engineering, and Public Policy (2001) also suggests that in order to support the workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics such habits of minds should be nurtured in K-8 education. Considering the fact that deeper understanding of scientific knowledge and the effort put forth while engaging in a science activity are to be related to students’ goals (Paulick, Watermann, & Nückles, 2013; Sideridis & Kaplan, 2011), there is a need for science educators to investigate the factors related to the reasons for students’ achievement behaviors in science classes to help them adopt adaptive goals in their learning.
In line with the abovementioned literature and propositions, the current study aims at addressing the following research questions:
- How well perceived parents’ mastery and performance approach goals emphases predict students’ personal achievement goals (personal mastery and performance approach goals) in science?
- Is there an interaction between perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis on students’ personal achievement goals?
