Mastery Motivation: Definition and Measurement

This paper presents a working definition of mastery motivation which has evolved from our research with infants and young children over the past two decades. We define mastery motivation as a psychological force that stimulates an individual to attempt independently, in a focused and persistent manner, to solve a problem or master a skill or task which is at least moderately challenging for him or her. After describing key features of this definition, we discuss three conceptual issues: 1) the distinction between mastery motivation and cognitive competence, 2) developmental transitions in mastery motivation, and 3) the breadth of the concept. The paper concludes with a long section on assessing mastery motivation. Persistence at tasks is the main measure of the strength of the child's mastery motivation. Our structured task procedure, for 15- to 36-month-old children, attempts to disentangle mastery motivation and competence. We have also developed a questionnaire to assess mastery motivation in general and in five specific behavioral domains: social, symbolic, combinatorial, means-end, and gross motor. We believe that our definition helps to clarify the concept of mastery motivation and that our assessment procedures will facilitate future research.     

Humor and competence in school-aged children

Multiple aspects of humor were evaluated in children between the ages of 10 and 14 and related to several areas of competence manifested at school. Humor measures assessed appreciation (including mirth, subjective ratings, and response sets), comprehension, and production, while competence measures included teacher ratings of classroom behavior, peer reputation, and achievement. Humor was related to competence in several ways consistent with previous theory and research: (1) through the manifestation of intellectual ability both in humor behaviors and in competent functioning; (2) through the role of mastery motivation enhancing both types of functioning; and (3) through peer relations, resulting from the effects of humor on peer acceptance or the effects of peer relations on humor behaviors. Ideas for further research relating humor to social competence, social cognition, and mastery motivation are discussed.     

Self-concept, motivation, and competence among preschoolers from maltreating and comparison families

Maltreated children are at risk for impaired cognitive and school functioning. In this study, the role that home environment, self-concept, and mastery motivation play in this relation was investigated. Thirty-six preschool children and their mothers, representing three family backgrounds (12 low-income maltreating, 12 low-income comparison, 12 middle-income comparison), were assessed in a preschool/home study. Children from maltreating families scored lower than their peers on several measures of cognitive and physical competence and on ratings of motivation. At the same time, these children significantly overrated their physical competence, and self-ratings of competence and acceptance tended to be higher (and less realistic) than those of their low-income peers. An overall difference in developmental quality of the home environment of maltreating families was largely accounted for by socioeconomic status (SES), but the tendency of these homes to be less clean and safe remained significant even after SES was controlled. Various aspects of the home environment were associated with superior task performance, but not with motivation or self-perceptions. Whereas the general home environment may affect competence, relationship factors implicated in maltreatment may be more important in shaping self-concept and motivation.     

Perceived motivational climate and intrinsic motivation in school physical education classes

Research has shown that dispositional achievement goal orientations have important effects on motivation, affect and behaviour in sport and physical activity. However, rather less is known about the relationship between perceived ethos, or climate, of physical education (P.E.) classes and subsequent motivation. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate the psychometric properties of an inventory assessing P.E. class climate and the relationship of subscales of the inventory with intrinsic motivation. Second order factor analysis revealed class climate dimensions of ‘mastery’ and ‘performance’, confirming prior research. The mastery dimension scores were found to significantly enhance the prediction of intrinsic motivation beyond that accounted for by perceived competence, whereas this was not the case for performance climate scores. MANOVA showed that children perceiving their P. E. class to be high inboth mastery and performance climate reported greater intrinsic motivation and perceived competence.     

The Effects of Mastery and Competitive Conditions on Self-Assessment at Different Ages

It was hypothesized that self-evaluative accuracy will increase with age in a competitive condition, while even young children will appraise their performance quite accurately in a mastery condition. Children at ages 5, 7, and 10 working in either a match-the-standard or a competitive condition copied a drawing and then evaluated their copies. As hypothesized, competing 5-year-olds overestimated the quality of their copies, and self-assessments became less positive and better correlated with adult judgments with age. There were no age differences in self-evaluative accuracy in the mastery condition. Examination of children's explanations for their ratings and their interest in the task supported the interpretation that young children are guided by a nonnormative concept of ability, which can lead to overoptimistic perceptions of competence under competition. Older children tended to adopt normative goals and criteria for self-assessment in competition and mastery ones in the match the standard condition, and were realistic about their performance in both.     

Mastery motivation and expressive language in young children with hearing loss

We studied the relation between mastery motivation and expressive language in 200 young children with hearing loss. Hearing mothers assessed their children's expressive language (Minnesota Child Development Inventory; Ireton & Thwing, 1974) and several aspects of mastery motivation including mastery pleasure and three components of mastery persistence (gross motor, object oriented, and social/symbolic) using the Dimensions of Mastery Motivation Questionnaire (Morgan et al., 1992). Simple correlations revealed significant relations between expressive language and all mastery motivation scales. When demographic and hearing loss variables were entered into a regression equation, only increased social/symbolic persistence was significantly related to, and increased object-oriented persistence was marginally related to, increases in expressive language quotients. Expressive language quotients also increased significantly as child age and degree of hearing loss decreased and as mothers' ratings of their child's general competence increased. In addition, decreases in the age at which the child was enrolled in intervention were marginally related to increases in expressive language quotients (f =.06).     

On the Application of Task-based Approach in English Listening Teaching at Middle Schools

In order to command a foreign language, it requires a balanced development in listening, speaking, reading and writing,which are four essential skills of language competence. Listening is not only a vital approach to acquire language, but also an important way to communicate with others in our daily life. The Task-based Approach(TBA) focuses on the specific task, which is the learning motivation. The process of finishing the task is the process of learning. The teaching result is judged by the task performed or not. This research discusses the application of TBA in English Listening Teaching at Middle Schools in order to improve the students listening ability. In the first part, the author introduces the background and significance of the research. In the second part, it states the definition of listening comprehension, the characteristics of listening process, three models of listening processing. In the third part, it introduces the definition of Task, characteristics of task, and the principles of designing a task. Finally, it introduces the Task-based Approach. In the fourth part, discusses the current situation of English teaching at middle school,and the elaboration on the task-based model of English listening teaching. All in all, the research is to make the audience to understand the application of Task-based Approach in English listening teaching at middle schools so as to improve the students' English listening ability.     

Cognitive-Motivational Influences on the Task-Related Help-Seeking Behavior of Black Children

The present study examined the relation between children's mastery motivation, self-assessment of performance, and task-related help-seeking behavior during task performance. Average-achieving black American children, varying in mastery motivation as measured by subscales of the Harter's Intrinsic-Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom Scale, performed a multitrial verbal task and were given the opportunity to seek help on each trial after making a tentative response and assessing their performance by rating their confidence in the correctness of the response. A response-contingent payoff system was implemented to encourage children to restrict their help seeking to those instances in which they perceived that they could not make a correct response without assistance. As predicted, children's self-assessments of performance, regardless of their accuracy, appeared to influence help seeking more than the actual performance outcomes. Neither children's self-assessments of performance nor their overall rate of help seeking varied with level of measured mastery motivation. However, the type of help sought varied as expected with mastery motivation. Children characterized by high intrinsic orientations toward independent mastery in academic achievement contexts sought indirect help (i.e., hints) more often than they sought direct help (i.e., answers), whereas children characterized by low intrinsic orientations toward independent mastery showed no preference. These differences in motivational orientation influenced requests for help only when children perceived their initial solutions to be incorrect. These findings are discussed in the context of the analyses of help seeking as an instrumental learning and achievement strategy. The implications of the findings for analyses of black children's achievement styles are highlighted.     

Mastery Motivation in Children with Intellectual Disability: Is there Evidence for a Down Syndrome Behavioural Phenotype?

The main purpose of the current study was to provide empirical evidence to support or refute assumptions of phenotypic deficits in motivation for children with Down syndrome (DS). Children with moderate intellectual disability (MID) associated with etiologies other than DS were recruited in an extension of a previous study that involved children with DS and typically developing children. The participants were 29 children with MID and 33 children with DS who were matched on mental age to 33 typically developing children, aged 3–8 years. Mastery motivation was assessed on task measures of curiosity, preference for challenge and persistence, as well as parental reports. There were no significant group differences on the mastery motivation tasks. Parental ratings of mastery motivation differed, with typically developing children generally being rated more highly than each of the disability groups. The view that motivational deficits are part of the DS behavioural phenotype was not supported.     

Relationships among perceived competence,intrinsic value and mastery goal orientation in English and maths

A large and burgeoning literature has established that mastery goal orientations yield positive cognitive and behavioural educational outcomes. Less research has focused on the psychological antecedents of adopting mastery goals. The present study draws upon prominent psychological theories of ac motivation, specifically the expectancy-value theory of Eccles, Wigfield and colleagues (Wigfield and Eccles 2002), to explore possible antecedents of students’ mastery goals. Based on this theoretical framework, our study focused on children’s perceptions of their competencies in English and maths and how these related to intrinsic value and mastery goals for English and maths. Questionnaires were used to gather data about Year 6 (N=60) participants’ perceived competence, intrinsic value and mastery goal orientation, and correlational analyses established the direction and strength of the relationships between the perceptions. Participants were targeted for follow-up interviews (n=17) according to a matrix of low and high competence perceptions and mastery goals, with students selected from within each of six focal groups. Interview responses were reported according to emergent themes, from which we describe how the constructs under consideration relate to one another and highlight implications for educational practice.     

Gender Differences in Social Mastery Motivation and Its Relationships to Vocabulary Knowledge,Behavioral Self-Regulation,and Socioemotional Skills

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents recruited through local kindergartens’ parent groups. The children were administered measures of social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and nonverbal intelligence. Parents reported their education level and children’s socioemotional skills. Research Findings: Results revealed that boys exhibited more social mastery interactions than girls, and girls showed better behavioral self-regulation and socioemotional skills than boys. Girls with higher social mastery interaction frequency demonstrated better vocabulary knowledge and socioemotional skills, whereas boys with higher social mastery interaction frequency showed lower behavioral self-regulation. Boys, who showed more positive affect during social mastery interactions, tended to have better expressive vocabulary, which facilitated their behavioral self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight social mastery motivation as a potential factor that facilitates children’s early development, but it may contribute to boys and girls in different ways.     

Academic Self-Concept and Self-Efficacy: How Different Are They Really?

Academic motivation researchers sometimes struggle to decipher the distinctive characteristics of what appear to be highly analogous constructs. In this article, we discuss important similarities between self-concept and self-efficacy as well as some notable differences. Both constructs share many similarities such as centrality of perceived competence in construct definition; use of mastery experience, social comparison, and reflected appraisals as major information sources; and a domain-specific and multidimensional nature. Both predict motivation, emotion, and performance to varying degrees. However, there are also important differences. These differences include integration vs. separation of cognition and affect, heavily normative vs. goal-referenced evaluation of competence, aggregated vs. context-specific judgment, hierarchical vs. loosely hierarchical structure, past vs. future orientation, and relative temporal stability vs. malleability. We argue that self-efficacy acts as an active precursor of self-concept development and suggest that self-concept research separate out its multiple components and subprocesses and invest more effort toward making students less preoccupied with normative ability comparisons in school.     

Mastery Motivation in Toddlers with Developmental Disabilities

Prior research on school-age children with mental retardation indicates that they are less motivated on tasks than mental-age-matched peers. In this study, mastery motivation on two tasks was compared for 1- and 2-year-old children with motor impairment ( n = 25), developmental delay ( n = 25), and typical development ( n = 25), matched for mental age. The groups did not differ significantly on any measure of mastery motivation. The relative contribution of premature birth, a history of seizure disorders, severity of cognitive delay, and maternal didactic interaction in predicting mastery motivation was examined for toddlers with developmental delay or motor impairment. Maternal didactic interaction added a significant proportion of variance above and beyond other variables in predicting several aspects of mastery motivation in toddlers with developmental disabilities.     

Achievement Goals During Middle Childhood: Individual Differences in Motivation and Social Adjustment

Person-centered analyses of achievement goals have been scarce in studies of elementary school children. In this investigation, the authors examined the natural combinations of achievement goals (mastery, performance-approach, performance-avoidance) among 3rd grade students (N = 195) and how clusters differed in self-, teacher-, and peer-reported adjustment variables. Cluster analysis revealed four groups of students: mastery (above average in mastery goals, below average in performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals), multi-goal (above average in all three goals), avoidant (above average in performance-avoidance goals, below average in mastery and performance-approach goals), and low motivation (below average in all three goals). Clusters differed in self-reported academic self-efficacy and perceptions of teacher support, teacher-reported academic competence, and peer nominations of social status. Mastery students had the most adaptive profiles; low motivation, the least adaptive. Avoidant boys had more maladaptive profiles than avoidant girls.     

Digital competence – an emergent boundary concept for policy and educational research

Digital competence is an evolving concept related to the development of digital technology and the political aims and expectations of citizenship in a knowledge society. It is regarded as a core competence in policy papers; in educational research it is not yet a standardized concept. We suggest that it is a useful boundary concept, which can be used in various contexts. For this study, we analysed 76 educational research articles in which digital competence, described by different terms, was investigated. As a result, we found that digital competence consists of a variety of skills and competences, and its scope is wide, as is its background: from media studies and computer science to library and literacy studies. In the article review, we found a total of 34 terms that had used to describe the digital technology related skills and competences; the most often used terms were digital literacy, new literacies, multiliteracy and media literacy, each with somewhat different focus. We suggest that digital competence is defined as consisting of (1) technical competence, (2) the ability to use digital technologies in a meaningful way for working, studying and in everyday life, (3) the ability to evaluate digital technologies critically, and (4) motivation to participate and commit in the digital culture.     

Mastery motivation and self-evaluative affect in toddlers: longitudinal relations with maternal behavior

This study examined relations between maternal control and evaluative feedback during the second year of life and children's mastery motivation and expressions of self-evaluative affect a year later. Participants were 75 toddlers (35 girls, 40 boys) and their mothers. Maternal controlling behavior and evaluative feedback were examined while mothers taught their 24-month-olds a challenging task. Children's mastery motivation and expressions of self-evaluative affect were assessed during easy and difficult achievement-like tasks when they were 36 months old. Maternal evaluative feedback and control style at 24 months predicted children's shame, persistence, and avoidance of mastery activities at 36 months. Specifically, negative maternal evaluations at age two related to children's later shame, especially when feedback was linked to children's actions or products; positive maternal feedback overall, as well as corrective feedback, related to children's later persistence; mothers who engaged in more autonomy-supporting control with their 2-year-olds had children who were less likely to avoid challenging activities at age 3. Children's pride at 36 months was not predicted by mothers' behavior at 24 months.     

Buffering against performance classroom goal structures: The importance of autonomy support and classroom community

The culture of schooling in the United States has become increasingly focused on outwardly proving student competence. Some achievement goal theorists suggest that a major casualty of performance-oriented classroom environments may be student motivation for developing and improving competence. The present study extends across theoretical frameworks of motivation to highlight student perceptions of contextual variables that may mitigate or “buffer” the negative relationship between a perceived performance-oriented classroom goal structure and mastery goals. Survey data were collected from 178 high school students in 15 mathematics classes. Multilevel modeling was used to test student perceptions of three contextual buffers: classroom community, teacher’s autonomy support, and a mastery classroom goal structure. Two significant interactions revealed that classroom community and autonomy support erased the negative effect of a perceived performance classroom goal structure. Results provide practitioners with tools for counteracting potential negative implications of emphasizing performance in the classroom.     

Fostering Intrinsic Motivation in Early Childhood Classrooms

Young children are born with an innate curiosity to learn about their world. This intrinsically instigated learning is often called mastery motivation. Patterns of motivation are established at an early age. The early childhood years are crucial for establishing robust intrinsic motivational orientations which will last a lifetime. By the time many children reach school, much of their motivation has been lost or replaced with extrinsically motivated learning strategies. Preschools and elementary schools have been criticized for contributing to such negative motivational patterns in children. This can be changed. Early child care situations and preschools can instead be instrumental in the strengthening of children's motivation. The goal of this paper is to show that through an understanding of the beginnings of motivation, we can begin to find ways to build strong motivational patterns in children that can carry on to later years of learning.     

Judgments of self-perceived academic competence and their differential impact on students’ achievement motivation, learning approach, and academic performance

Using path analysis, the present study focuses on the development of a model describing the impact of four judgments of self-perceived academic competence on higher education students’ achievement goals, learning approach, and academic performance. Results demonstrate that academic self-efficacy, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, academic self-concept, and perceived level of understanding are conceptually and empirically distinct self-appraisals of academic competence which have a different impact on student motivation, learning, and academic performance. Furthermore, the current study suggests that students reflecting high scores on the four measures of self-perceived competence, are more persistent, more likely to adopt mastery and/or performance approach goals, less anxious, process the learning material at a deeper level, and achieve better study results. However, this study also warns that high self-perceived competence (e.g., perceived level of understanding), if not accompanied by a mastery goal orientation, can turn into overconfidence resulting in lower persistence levels and poorer study results.     

Motivational Climates,Achievement Goals,and Physical Education Outcomes: A Longitudinal Test of Achievement Goal Theory

The present research tested the longitudinal relations over a school‐year between motivational climates, achievement goals, and five physical education outcomes, namely intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, positive attitude, exertion, and attendance in physical education. The results showed that students’ mastery goals measured early in the school‐year (Time 1) predicted all five physical education outcomes one year later (Time 2), controlling for physical education outcomes at Time 1. Two structural equation change models of climates and goals were also tested: (1) change in mastery climate predicted positively change in mastery goals, which positively predicted physical education outcomes after one year; and (2) distinct performance climate sub‐factors, namely changes in normative praise and negative emotional tune, predicted positive changes in performance‐approach, and performance‐avoidance goals, respectively. In turn, change in performance‐approach goals predicted positively, and change in performance‐avoidance goals predicted negatively, the PE outcomes after one year.