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

This study aims to investigate middle school students’ coping strategies in relation to students’ personal goal orientations and perceptions of motivating tasks provided in science class. Results show that a higher perception of motivating tasks in the classroom predicts students’ use of positive coping strategies positively, while it predicts use of projective coping strategies negatively. This result indicates that in science classes where teacher makes use of activities which draws students' attention, are related to students’ daily lives or future profession, and are meaningful for students, students have a higher tendency to use positive coping strategies like trying to understand their mistakes when they fail. Moreover, in the classrooms where motivating tasks are conducted more, students have a lower tendency to use projective coping strategies such as blaming the teacher for their failures. This shows the importance of teachers' inclusion of motivating tasks into the lessons. By enriching the classes with activities that draws students' attention, science teachers may contribute to increasing students' use of positive coping strategies and decreasing their use of projective coping strategies. Class environments which increase curiosity of students towards learning by conducting different and varying activities increase tendency towards learning (Ames, 1992). Furthermore, students who find the activities provided in the classroom meaningful, useful, and interesting feel more confident in achieving goals of the lessons (Ames, 1992; Greene et al., 2004; Hidiroglu, 2014; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Sungur & Gungoren, 2009). Individuals with higher self-efficacy insist on succeeding a task for long term while individuals with lower self-efficacy have a tendency to give up the task quickly (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Individuals who insist on their tasks for long term use adaptive coping strategies, while those who get tired of the task very quickly have a tendency to use maladaptive strategies (Kaplan & Midgley, 1996). In this study, Classroom Goal Structures Survey (Blackburn, 1998; Greene et al., 2004) was used for detecting students’ classroom goal structures and the survey was developed in order to exhibit classroom mastery goal structure (Ames, 1992). Providing motivating tasks in the classroom, which is one of the subdimensions of the scale, emphasizes classroom mastery goal structure. The findings of the current study which states that motivating tasks in classroom environment is positively associated with positive coping strategies and negatively associated with projective coping strategies are supported by the studies conducted by Dweck and Leggett (1988) and Kaplan and Midgley (1999). In these studies, the relationship between students’ perceptions of learning environment, which handles mastery and performance goal structure, and academic coping is examined. The fact that students with mastery structured classroom perception exhibit positive outcomes (adaptive coping strategies) such as being insistent in the face of a difficulty and creating effective strategies are supporting the findings of the current study.

Another finding of the study is that the students with higher mastery-approach goals tend to utilize more positive coping strategies and less projective coping and non-coping strategies. In other words, it is seen that students who focus on developing their own skills and understanding the lesson better try to find their mistakes and tend not to blame their teacher in the event of a failure. Similarly, in Friedel et al. (2007)’s study with seventh grade students in mathematics class demonstrated that mastery goal orientation is positively related with positive coping strategies and negatively related with projective coping and denial strategies. The same result is supported by Taye and Zhou (2009), Brdar et al. (2006), and Delahaij and Dam (2016) who investigated coping strategies with a different classification. Taye and Zhou (2009) found that mastery goal orientation is positively associated with adaptive coping strategies of active coping, positive reinterpretation and growth, and planning. Moreover, the fact that students with mastery goal orientation makes use of problem focused coping strategies (Brdar et al., 2006; Delahaij & Dam, 2016) is consistent with the findings of this study.

Another finding of the study is that contrary to mastery-approach goal orientation, mastery-avoidance goal orientation is negatively related to positive coping strategy and positively related to projective coping and non-coping strategies. This result is inconsistent with the literature (Brdar et al, 2006; Delahaij & Dam, 2016; Friedel et al., 2007; Taye & Zhou, 2009). However, previous studies (e.g. Brdar et al, 2006; Delahaij & Dam, 2016; Friedel et al., 2007) generally did not use approach and avoidance division but used mastery and performance goal orientation and examined how these two goal orientations were related with coping strategies. When the items of the scales used in these studies are inspected, it is seen that mastery and performance goals were addressed from approach dimension. There are a few studies which make a distinction between approach and avoidance goal orientation and examine their relations with coping strategies. For example, Kahraman (2011) investigated the relationship between personal goal orientations (mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) and coping strategies among middle school students in Turkey. A positive relation between maladaptive coping strategies and mastery-avoidance goal orientation was found. That is, students with mastery-avoidance goals tend to utilize maladaptive strategies such as ignoring and blaming self and others when they encounter an academic difficulty. Findings of the current study are consistent with the findings of Kahraman.

Another interesting result is that in the face of an academic difficulty, students with performance-avoidance goal orientation utilize positive coping strategies such as seeking help, and recognizing and analyzing own mistakes. In their study, Taye and Zhou (2009) found that performance-avoidance goal orientation is not related with adaptive coping strategies but it predicts maladaptive coping strategies positively. The researches state that cultural factors, family, and beliefs of the society in which the students are raised have a significant role in this result. While explaining the relationship between the goal orientations and coping strategies, Kahraman (2011) also referred to the importance of factors such as Turkish education system and cultural factors and stated that in societies with collectivist culture such as Turkey, mastery-avoidance goal orientation is more dominant. Individuals in collectivist societies have a higher tendency to adopt avoidance goals and in this type of societies, avoidance goal orientation is not associated with maladaptive outcomes. This is because impulse of blocking and coping with negative results is valuable in these societies in which individuals define their personality in accordance with the society (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, & Sheldon, 2001). In their study conducted in Turkey, Sungur and Senler (2009) pointed out that having a performance-avoidance goal orientation may act as a driving force for students for a better performance in a competitive education system. The results of the present study show that students who focus on not receiving lower grades and not failing in front of others have a higher tendency to utilize positive coping strategies and support the findings of the studies conducted in Turkey.

The present study found no relationship between personal goal orientations and denial coping strategies. Similarly, Friedel et al. (2007) and Taye and Zhou (2009) did not find a relation between mastery goal orientation and denial coping. This result supports that in the event of failure, having a mastery goal orientation is not associated with ignoring the failure. While Taye and Zhou (2009) could not also find an association between performance-approach and denial coping, Friedel et al. (2007) found that students who endorse performance-approach goals have a higher tendency to utilize denial coping. Taye and Zhou (2009) found that only performance-avoidance predicts denial coping and they are positively related. Consistent with the results of the present study, Kahraman (2011) also could not establish a relation between Turkish middle school students’ goal orientations and their use of denial coping strategies. This result may be related to the highly competitive and exam oriented structure of Turkish education system. This is because in such a system, students do not have the luxury to ignore their mistakes. In a system like this, students have a tendency towards both to attend a good high school and to avoid being the worst student in their class (Kahraman, 2011). The fact that there are different results in the literature regarding performance goals and denial coping shows that further studies are needed on this subject.

Findings of the present study support benefits of motivating tasks in science classes and endorsing mastery-approach goals for students’ use of more adaptive coping strategies. Thus, it is suggested science teachers to use tasks which are interesting and meaningful for students and are related to students’ lives or future careers. Furthermore, in order to promote students’ orientations toward mastery-approach goals, teachers may emphasize that comprehension of the material is important, recognize students’ effort, and highlight self-improvement (Ames, 1992).

This study has some limitations which must be mentioned. First of all, the results obtained in the study relies on the responses given by the students to the data collection tools. In future studies, in addition to data collection with surveys, interviews and observations may be utilized in order to explore the relations between the variables of the study. For example, with observations, the motivating classroom tasks utilized by the teachers may be analyzed in depth. Another limitation of this study is about the handled classroom environment dimension. In this study, among classroom environment goal perceptions, motivating tasks dimension is focused on. In future studies, investigation of academic coping strategies in relation to autonomy support and mastery evaluation dimensions of classroom structure can be done. Moreover, the study is limited to science lesson. Examining the relations between handled factors in different lessons is required for generalizing the results to other courses.