The role of motivating tasks and personal goal orientations in students’ coping strategies in science

People use various coping strategies when they encounter with difficulties (Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). Coping may be defined as strategies, thoughts, and behaviors people utilize in case of negative or stressful event or academic failure in order to handle such situations (Folkman & Moskowicz, 2004). Coping strategies are personal preferences and they may vary from person to person. For example, in the face of a hard task while some students immediately give up, other students insist on succeeding the task (Kaplan & Midgley, 1999).

Classification of coping strategies by the researchers differed in the process of time. First, they grouped coping strategies into three as problem oriented coping, emotion focused coping, and avoidance. Problem focused coping means coping or solving problems which are encountered. It aims to strengthen the relationship between the person and the environment. Examples of problem focused coping include taking teacher's advice and time scheduling. Emotion focused coping, which sees seeking emotional support as a solution, aims to manage emotions. Avoidance, on the other hand, aims to avoid problem by denying it (Lazarus & Folkman, 1986; Folkman, Lazarus, Gruen & DeLongis, 1986; Cited: Kahraman, 2011). Tero and Connell (1984) grouped coping strategies into four as positive coping, projective coping, denial coping, and non-coping. In positive coping, the student seeks his/her mistakes, analyzes his/her faults, and plans his/her time. In projective coping, the student blames his/her teacher, his/her parents, and people around him/her for his/her own mistakes. If the student blames himself/herself for his/her failures, the strategy is non-coping; while if he/she ignores his/her failures and states that said failures are unimportant and meaningless for him/her, the utilized strategy is denial coping (cited by: Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). In the later process, coping strategies are grouped into two as adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies in accordance with their results. Examples for adaptive coping strategies include finding out own mistakes, working harder, and seeking help, while examples of maladaptive coping strategies include blaming other people, ignoring failures, and blaming self (Friedel, Cortina, Turner & Midgley, 2007; Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). Generally, coping strategies act as a buffer zone in the relation between a stressful environment and wellbeing of the person. Structure of learning environments are connected to coping strategies utilized (Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). While positive coping strategy of Tore and Connell (1984) provides control over academic success outcome, projective and denial have negative effect on control and learning motivations. Non-coping causes school anxiety and low success, and it affects personality of the student negatively (cited by: Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). Therefore, it is considered important to study the correlation of learning environment characteristics and student motivation with the coping strategies utilized by the students.

One of the motivational factors related to the coping strategies utilized by individuals is the personal achievement goal orientation. Goal orientation has contributed significantly to education and psychology fields since late 1970s (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996). Although goal orientation may be applied to many fields such as happiness and safety, achievement goals were specially developed in order to explain perception, thoughts, and beliefs of students towards learning (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). In other words, it studies why students want to be successful, how they approach success, and their experiences and efforts regarding this subject (Pintrich, 2000; Urdan, 1997). In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies regarding achievement goals in various levels of education ranging from primary school to teacher training (Gegenfurtner & Hagenauer, 2013).

There are two main achievement goals which are mastery goal orientation and performance goal orientation. While individuals with mastery goals focus on comprehension and self-improvement, individuals with performance goals focus on demonstrating their competence and skills to others and comparing themselves with other people (Ames, 1992; Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). While mastery goals provide positive outcomes such as being insistent and producing effective strategies in the face of a difficulty, performance goals provide negative outcomes such as avoidance and reducing efforts. Students with mastery goals ask more questions in order to specialize in a subject while students with performance goals may even avoid asking questions for the fear that all their actions will be compared to others' and that their incompetence will become evident (Ryan, Gheen & Midgley, 1998). Mastery and performance goals are both divided into two categories as approach and avoidance and form mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goal orientations. While a student who tries to show himself⁄herself as smart to others has high levels of performance-approach goals, a student who studies in order to avoid feeling humiliated when compared to others endorse performance-avoidance goals. If the student tries to improve his⁄her knowledge and skills, he⁄she adopts mastery-approach goals, and if he⁄she avoids misunderstanding and failing to learn, he/she is oriented towards mastery-avoidance goals (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002).

Studies on the relationship between achievement goals and coping strategies generally indicate positive relationship between mastery goals and adaptive strategies such as taking advice, planning, finding out the mistake, and not repeating it, while maladaptive coping strategies such as denial and blaming other people are positively related with performance goals (Friedel et al., 2007; Kahraman, 2011; Taye & Zhou, 2009). Studies which utilize a different classification in coping strategies indicate that students with mastery goals use problem focused coping strategies while students with performance goals tend to utilize emotion focused coping strategies more (Brdar, Rijavec & Lancaric, 2006; Delahaij & Dam, 2016). Moreover, these studies indicate that student with emotion focused coping strategies have much negative outcomes (Brdar et al., 2006).

It is known that classroom goal structures have an effect on both the achievement goal orientation of the students and the coping strategies through the goal orientations (Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). Classroom goal structures may be communicated to the students in many methods such as types of academic tasks assigned to the students, the way the students are evaluated, and the way the students are encouraged to complete academic tasks (Ames, 1992). Moreover, classroom goal structures affect academic beliefs and behaviors of the students (Ryan et al., 1998). Classroom environments in which skill displaying and comparison remain at the forefront (i.e., classroom performance goal structure) may be stressful and may produce negative outcomes, while environments in which developing understanding and skills are forefront (i.e., classroom mastery goal structure) provides opportunities for improvement and produces positive outcomes (Kaplan & Midgley, 1999). Students like classroom environments with mastery goal structured more than classroom environments with performance goal structured. This is because in performance goal structured classes, students refrain from making mistakes in front of others and feel uncomfortable. This lowers students’ academic success level and increases their level of anxiety. In mastery goal structured classrooms, students are subjected to these negative situations much less (Ames & Archer, 1988).

Classroom structures which may facilitate establishment of mastery goals in students include autonomy support, mastery evaluation, and motivating tasks (Ames, 1992). Autonomy support means that the person makes his/her own choices and has control over his/her actions. Individuals whose feeling of autonomy is supported have a higher level of success, enjoyment, desire, and participation (Ames, 1992; Sungur & Gungoren, 2009). Moreover, autonomy support eliminates negative effects of performance based classroom goal structure (Ciani, Middleton, Summers & Sheldon, 2010). Mastery evaluation includes criteria and methods used by the teachers in order to evaluate their students and control their learning. Evaluations should be fair, not allowing for social comparison, focusing on personal development, and intending learning and student effort (Ames, 1992). Motivating tasks are materials given in classroom in learning process and as homework. Tasks given to students should be different, varying, meaningful and related to students, and involve special and short term goals. Different and varying tasks arouse curiosity towards learning in the student. Moreover, activities which are meaningful and related to the student increase tendency towards learning (Ames, 1992). Students who find the activities provided in the classroom meaningful, useful, and interesting feel more confident in reaching goals of the lessons (Ames, 1992; Greene, Miller, Crowson, Duke & Akey, 2004; Hidiroglu, 2014; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Sungur & Gungoren, 2009). Students who find classroom activities significant, enjoyable, and interesting not only have a much positive belief regarding learning, but also try to find out their mistakes and work harder when they encounter an academic failure and blame other people less for their failures (Kahraman, 2011).

In the relevant literature, some found that students’ perceptions of classroom goal structure significantly predict their achievement goal orientations (e.g., Greene et al., 2004; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003; Lyke & Young, 2006; Pintrich, 2000; Sungur & Gungoren, 2009; Tas, 2008) and academic coping strategies (e.g., Kahraman, 2011; Kaplan & Midgley, 1996; Ryan et al., 1998). Besides, it was found that achievement goal orientations of students are related to their academic coping strategies (Brdar et al., 2006; Delahaij & Dam, 2016; Friedel et al., 2007; Kahraman, 2011; Taye & Zhou, 2009). However, few studies have examined the relationship between students’ perceptions of motivating tasks provided in the classroom, personal achievement goals, and academic coping strategies. Furthermore, in the revised Turkish science curriculum, the importance of utilizing tasks which are interesting for students and relevant to their lives are emphasized (Ministry of National Education, 2013). Given that few studies on the relationship between motivating tasks, achievement goals, and coping strategies have been conducted and highlights in Turkish science curriculum for using motivating tasks in the science class, this study explores how students’ personal goal orientations and perceptions of motivating tasks provided in the classroom predict students’ coping strategies. Research questions of the study are as follows:

Do students’ perceptions of motivating tasks in the science class predict their academic coping strategies?
Do students’ personal goal orientations predict their academic coping strategies?