 |
Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2012) |
Descriptive Statistics
In this study all descriptive statistical analyses were obtained using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software.
Descriptive statistics were used to investigate the 7th grade elementary students’ profiles about their achievement goals and their perceptions about their parents’ achievement goals in science classes. On a five point scale, the mean scores suggested that students have high levels of both mastery and performance approach goals in science classes indicating that they tend to study for science classes for the reasons of learning and understanding as well as showing their science abilities to others and performing better than the classmates. On the other hand, their perceived parents’ goal emphases appeared to be moderate. This finding implied that parents’ goal emphases were not highly salient to students for their science classes. The means, and standard deviations, of each of the variables were presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics
M
SD
α
Mastery approach goals
4.52
.58
.70
Performance approach goals
4.37
.69
.64
Perceived parent mastery approach goal emphasis
3.94
.79
.70
Perceived parent performance approach goal emphasis
3.80
.79
.64
Examination of the Students’ Personal Achievement Goals in relation to Perceived Parents’ Achievement Goals
A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine how well students’ perceptions about their parents’ mastery approach and performance approach goal emphases predict their personal mastery approach goals in science and to determine whether there is an interaction between perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis on students’ adoption of mastery approach goals. In the analysis, perceived parents’ goal emphases were entered simultaneously in the first block and then the interaction term is entered in the second block. In order to assess the statistical significance of the interaction, the change in R2 was evaluated (see Table 2). The results showed that student’ perceptions of their parents’ mastery approach goals and performance approach goals were significantly related their adoption of mastery approach goals in science (F (2, 292) = 11. 41, p= .000). The sample multiple correlation coefficient was .27, indicating that perceived parent goal emphases accounted for approximately 7.3 % of the variance in the personal mastery approach goals. After interaction was also included, the model as a whole explained about 9.8 % of the variance (R = .31). The change in R2 associated with introducing the interaction into the model was statistically significant (∆R2 = .025, , ∆F(1,291)= 8.11, p = .005) revealing that interaction between perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis was significant. In order to describe this interaction, the values at one standard deviation below the mean and at one standard deviation above the mean for perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis were calculated. The values at one standard deviation below the mean indicated low parents’ goal emphases and the values at one standard deviation above the mean indicated high parents’ goal emphases. Then, students’ adoption of mastery approach goals was predicted for each combination of low and high values using the regression equation obtained after introduction of interaction term (see Table 2). After that, the nature of the interaction was presented using obtained values in Figure 1. As shown in the figure, students who perceive low parent mastery approach goal emphasis, adopt personal mastery approach goals at lower levels regardless of whether they also perceive a low or high performance approach goal emphases from their parents. On the other hand, students who perceive high parent mastery approach goal emphasis and high performance approach goal emphasis adopt personal mastery approach goals at the highest levels. Overall, inspection of the interaction given in the figure revealed that students perceiving high parent mastery approach goal emphasis are more likely to have personal mastery approach goals at higher levels.
Table 2. Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Student Mastery Approach Goals
Student Mastery Approach Goal
Predictor Variable
B
SE
β
sr2
Block1
Constant
3.80
.20
PPMAGE
.21
.05
.28**
.067
PPPAGE
-.02
.05
-.03
.001
Block 2
Constant
2.03
.65
PPMAGE
.67
.17
.90**
.05
PPPAGE
.48
.18
.65**
.02
PPMAGE *PPPAGE
-.13
.05
-1.09**
,03
Note.
PPMAGE: Perceived parent mastery approach goal emphasis;
PPPAGE: Perceived parent performance approach goal emphasisThe second hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to examine how well students’ perceptions about their parents’ approach goals, both mastery approach and performance approach goals predict their personal performance approach goals in science. and to determine whether there is an interaction between perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis on students’ adoption of performance approach goals. In the analysis, perceived parents’ goal emphases were entered simultaneously in the first block and then the interaction term is entered in the second block. The results showed that student’ perceptions of their parents’ mastery approach goals and performance approach goals were significantly related their adoption of performance approach goals in science (F (2, 292) = 12. 19, p= .000). The sample multiple correlation coefficient was .28, indicating that perceived parent goal emphases accounted for approximately 7.7 % of the variance in the personal performance approach goals. After interaction was also included, the model as a whole still explained 7.7 % of the variance (R = .28). The change in R2 associated with introducing the interaction into the model was not statistically significant (∆R2 = .000, ,∆F(1,291)= .002, p = .960). Because that interaction between perceived parent mastery approach goals emphasis and perceived parent performance approach goals emphasis was not found to be significant, the results obtained only for the first block was interpreted (Weinberg & Abramowitz, 2008). Examination of the coefficients displayed in Table 3 revealed that perceived parent performance approach goal emphasis made a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of students’ adoption of performance approach goals in science (β = .25, p <0.05), while perceived parent mastery approach goal emphasis failed to achieve significance (β = .02, p > 0.05). Squared semi partial correlations displayed in Table 3 indicated that perceived parent performance approach goals accounted for 6 % of the variance in students’ personal approach goals.
Table 3. Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Student Performance Approach Goals
Student Performance Approach Goal
Predictor Variable
B
SE
β
sr2
Block1
Constant
3.38
.23
PPMAGE
.03
.05
.03
.001
PPPAGE
.23
.05
.26**
.060
Block 2
Constant
3.42
.78
PPMAGE
.02
.20
.02
.000
PPPAGE
.22
.22
.25
.003
PPMAGE *PPPAGE
.00
.05
.02
.000
Note.
PPMAGE: Perceived parent mastery approach goal emphasis;
PPPAGE: Perceived parent performance approach goal emphasis
Figure 1. Plot of the interaction between perceived parent goal emphases on student mastery approach goal
