Predicting seventh grade students’ engagement in science by their achievement goals

In recent decades, educational and psychological researchers focused on student motivation and its effect on academic performance. Accordingly, motivation is a central focus of educational research in teaching and learning (Pintrich, 2003). Motivation refers to the process whereby goal-directed activity is started and sustained (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008). Student engagement is one of the key factors of motivation (Ferrel, 2012). Based on some researchers’ definitions, student engagement is described as students’ “psychological investment in and effort directed toward learning, understanding or mastering the knowledge, skills, or crafts that academic work is intended to promote” (Newmann, Wehlage, & Lamborn, 1992, p. 12); students’ “involvement with school” (Finn, 1989), and their “interest” and “emotional involvement” with school, including their “motivation to learn” (Steinberg, 1996). In general, student engagement refers to the extent to which a student involves actively in a learning activity (Connell & Wellborn, 1991). Because of its significant value in predicting the students’ academic progress and achievement, student engagement has been investigated in many studies (Bong, 2009; Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Greene, Miller, Crowson, Duke, & Akey, 2004). Although engagement is a multi-dimensional construct, which comprises psychological and behavioral dimensions (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004), according to general consensus, student engagement has three aspects, namely behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects. In a more recent research, in addition to these three-component models, Reeve & Tseng (2011) have proposed engagement taxonomy with four aspects: behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement.

Behavioral engagement can be defined in three ways. The first one requires developing positive action, such as obeying the rules in classroom and avoiding skipping school (Finn & Rock, 1997). Second concerns involvement in academic and learning tasks through efforts and attentions (Birch & Ladd, 1997). The last definition involves active participation in activities (Finn, 1993). Emotional engagement refers to students’ affective reactions in the classroom such as existence of enthusiasm and interest or non-existence of anger, boredom and anxiety (Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Reeve & Tseng, 2011). It contains not only positive reactions but also negative reactions to schools, teachers, classmates, and it affects students’ willingness to complete tasks (Fredricks et al., 2004). Cognitive engagement involves students’ thinking skills that help them proceed with mental processes necessary for learning (Corno & Mandinach, 1983; Fredricks et al., 2004). Cognitively engaged students use strategic and sophisticated learning strategies such outlining and summarizing (Fredricks et al., 2004). Agentic engagement is defined as “students’ intentional, proactive, and constructive contribution into the flow of instruction they receive” (Reeve, 2012, p. 161). It is a process through which students purposely attempt to create, enrich and personalize both what they learn and the conditions under which they learn (Reeve & Tseng, 2011).

Achievement Goals
Achievement goals have drawn the attention of educators to better understand the reasons of students’ achievement behaviors, i.e. why they personally engage in an academic task. While early research in this area identified two types of achievement goals namely, mastery goals and performance goals (Ames, 1992), more recent research proposed a four-factor model of achievement goals with the inclusion of approach/avoidance distinction to mastery-performance goals dichotomy (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Accordingly, four achievement goals have emerged in the literature: mastery approach goals, performance approach goals, mastery avoidance goals, and performance avoidance goals. Mastery approach goals emphasize learning, deep understanding, and self-improvement while performance approach goals emphasize demonstrating ability and outperforming others. Concerning avoidance goals, while mastery avoidance goals focus on avoiding not understanding and not learning, performance avoidance goals focus on avoiding being inferior and getting the worst grades (Anderman & Patrick, 2012). Related research has demonstrated that students with approach goals strive to improve the existing situation to realize their goals. They tend to try different strategies and focus on positive opportunities. Thus, they are less likely to experience negative feelings such as worry and anxiety than students adopting avoidance goals (Elliot, 2006).

Achievement Goals and Cognitive Engagement
Considerable research has revealed that the kinds of achievement goals that students hold are linked to the types of cognitive and metacognitive strategies they utilize while engaging in an academic task (Anderman & Patrick, 2012). For example, related studies showed a positive association between approach goals and use of various cognitive and metacognitive strategies resulting in deeper processing of information. Students with approach goals are found to demonstrate higher levels of metacognitive awareness and self-monitoring of cognition (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). For example, the study conducted by Wolters, Yu, and Pintrich (1996) revealed that students studying for the reasons of learning and understanding and showing their abilities to others tend to use various cognitive and self-regulatory strategies. In addition, Bong’s study (2009) indicated a positive relation between mastery approach goals and adaptive strategy use. Although the same study showed a positive association between mastery avoidance goals and adaptive strategy use, this association was weaker. Supporting this finding, Elliot and McGregor (2001) reported that mastery avoidance goals were not related to strategy use. On the other hand, related research generally showed that performance avoidance goals are linked to maladaptive strategy use (Elliot & McGregor, 2001).

Achievement Goals and Emotional Engagement
A number of studies revealed the association between achievement goals and various indicators of emotional engagement such as affect (Daniels et al., 2009; Elliot, 2006) and motivation (Murayama & Elliot, 2009). Indeed, Elliot (2006) reported that students with approach goals are likely to experience positive feelings while students with avoidance goals are likely to experience negative feelings such as worry and anxiety. Supporting this idea, working with college students, Daniels et al. (2009) found a positive link between both mastery- and performance approach goals and the feelings of hopefulness. Additionally, the study revealed a negative relationship between mastery approach goals and the feelings of helplessness. Similarly, Skaalvik (1997) conducted a study to examine the relationship between achievement goals and affect. According to the results, mastery approach goals and performance approach goals were related positively to self-esteem and negatively to math anxiety. On the other hand, performance avoidance goals were found to be negatively associated with self-esteem and positively with both verbal and math anxiety.

Achievement Goals and Behavioral Engagement
There are various studies revealing positive associations between mastery approach goals and academic behaviors such as expending effort and persistence (Miller et al., 1996); seeking help when needed (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997); and discussing schoolwork with other students (Patrick, Ryan, & Kaplan, 2007). Related studies showed that students with mastery goals are likely to prefer challenging tasks, persist in the face of difficulties, and demonstrate greater effort and less avoidance behaviors (Elliot & Church, 1997; Kaplan, Middleton, Urdan, & Midgley, 2002). On the other hand, adaptation of performance goals was not found to be linked to either persistence or effort (Miller et al., 1996). Performance goals were found to be associated with avoiding seeking help when needed (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997) and demonstrating disruptive behaviors during lessons (Ryan & Patrick, 2001).

Achievement Goals and Agentic Engagement
Since studies on the agentic engagement are relatively new and incomplete, there is not much research concerning the relationship between agentic engagement and goal orientations. However, Reeve and Lee (2014) stated that if teachers create a mastery-oriented classroom climate, their students will pay more attention to exerting effort; focussing on emotions of pleasure from hard work; using deeper cognitive strategies; and seeing other people as sources of knowledge, help and support. In other words, these students will concentrate on all aspects of engagement (i.e., behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic). The reason why agentic engagement occurs in such classrooms is that students can easily reflect their opinions or feelings during an activity as an active participant (Ainley, 2012). Since Reeve (2012) defined agentic engagement as students’ active contribution to teaching and learning practices, rather than static or compliant engagement, the present study predicts that there is a link between mastery goals and agentic engagement. More specifically, students who adopt mastery goals focus on learning as much as possible, overcoming a challenge, and enhancing their competence level. Accordingly, they are expected to share their opinions about how to improve the classroom practices or express their preferences; they may enthusiastically ask questions to improve their learning to their teachers. Additionally, agentic engagement requires students to have the capability to deal with new and challenging situations (Peach & Matthews, 2011) and it is thought that students’ mastery goal orientations can provide these requirements.

In sum, the relevant literature suggests that students’ adoption of mastery goals is positively associated with all aspects of engagement (i.e., behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement). Additionally, students’ adoption of mastery goals is expected to be associated with their agentic engagement. However, the literature concerning the relations between performance goals, avoidance goals and student engagement presents mixed results.

Significance of the Study
Despite the presence of a considerable body of research on student engagement in relation to achievement goals, most of these studies center on the mastery and performance goal dichotomy without considering a distinction between avoidance and approach goals. Therefore, in the current study achievement goals was investigated with regards to approach and avoidance goals. Thus, it is expected that this study may have potential to enlighten the inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between performance goals and different aspects of student engagement. Moreover, most of the engagement studies in the literature focused on behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components of engagement, but Reeve and Tseng (2011) searched out that this three component model presents incomplete understanding, so they added agentic engagement as a fourth aspect. Inclusion of agentic engagement as a fourth aspect in engagement studies can provide a full understanding of student engagement (Reeve & Tseng, 2011). Considering the importance of this new construct and insufficient research on it, the present study included agentic engagement as well as emotional, behavioral and cognitive engagement to conceptualize student engagement. Thus, it is expected that the gap in the engagement research may be filled by this study. Additionally, this study specifically focused on science domain because, in today’s world, one of the major goals of science education involves developing students as scientifically literate individuals who deeply comprehends and reflects on scientific knowledge, ideas, and explanations, actively participates in science activities and tasks, produces scientific evidences, and demonstrates positive affect toward science. According to National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science Engineering, and Public Policy (2001) to support the workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics such habits of minds should be nurtured in K-8 education. Thus, there is a need for science educators to investigate the factors which are related to all aspects of student engagement in science which involves students’ use of various strategies, their persistence, effort, positive affect, and intentional, constructive contribution to instruction. Because, achievement goals emerge as an important factor in all aspects of student engagement, current study aims to examine student engagement in science in relation to their achievement goals. Current findings can provide important implications for teachers, science educators, and curriculum developers, to create classroom environments promoting adoption of achievement goals conducive to student engagement in science.