How Future Goals Enhance Motivation and Learning in Multicultural Classrooms

This review examines the impact of future goals on motivation and learning in multicultural classrooms. Across cultures, schooling is a future-oriented investment. Studies of minority students' school achievement have advanced future goals as a crucial protective factor in the face of frequent school failure. At the same time, cultural discontinuities and limited opportunities in minority students' school careers may weaken the motivational force of the future. Our review of the seemingly contradictory evidence on the role of the future in minority students' school achievement calls for a more fine-grained motivational theory of the future. Specifically, converging findings support conceptual distinctions (a) between positive and negative perceptions of the instrumentality of school tasks for future goals, and (b) between internal and external regulation of classroom behaviour by future goals. Thus, positive instrumentality and internal regulation enhance intrinsic motivation and adaptive learning in multicultural classrooms. We conclude that the motivational force of future goals can be generalized to minority students and that it depends crucially on perceived instrumentality and internal regulation.     

When love hurts: Assessing the intersectionality of ethnicity,socio-economic status,parental connectedness,child abuse,and gender attitudes in juvenile violent delinquency

Researchers have not yet reached agreement about the validity of several competing explanations that seek to explain ethnic differences in juvenile violent offending. Ethnicity cannot solely explain why boys with an ethnic minority background commit more (violent) crimes. By assessing the intersectionality of structural, cultural and individual considerations, both the independent effects as well as the interplay between different factors can be examined. This study shows that aforementioned factors cumulatively play a role in severe violent offending, with parental connectedness and child abuse having the strongest associations. However, since most variables interact and ethnicity is associated with those specific factors, a conclusion to be drawn is that ethnicity may be relevant as an additional variable predicting severe violent offending although indirectly.     

On the differentiation of achievement goal orientations in physical education: a Rasch analysis approach

In two cross‐sectional studies, we investigated to what extent elementary (Study 1) and middle school (Study 2) students pursue similar, yet distinct, mastery‐related and performance‐related goals in physical education. We found that students were more likely to endorse outcome goals in conjunction with mastery‐related goals and ability goals in conjunction with normative goals. Rasch modelling suggested that students tended to endorse mastery‐approach goals than learning and outcome goals and that they tended to favour ability goals than performance‐approach goals. Differential item functioning analyses showed that autonomously motivated students were more likely to endorse learning goals and mastery‐approach goals and less likely to endorse outcome goals than less autonomously motivated students. They were also more likely to endorse ability goals and less likely to endorse normative goals than controlled motivated students. Results are discussed within the achievement goal framework and the self‐determination theory.     

Moving the Achievement Goal Approach One Step Forward: Toward a Systematic Examination of the Autonomous and Controlled Reasons Underlying Achievement Goals

An important recent development in the achievement goal literature is to define achievement goals strictly as aims. In this overview, we argue that this restrictive definition of achievement goals paves the way for a systematic consideration of the autonomous and controlled reasons underlying individuals’ achievement goals, a distinction central to self-determination theory. To stimulate work in this area, we formulated five propositions, arguing that consideration of the “why” (i.e., type of reasons) in addition to the “what” (i.e., type of aims) of achievement goals (a) provides an account for the regulatory basis of achievement goals, (b) opens the door for other motivation theories to be linked to the achievement goal literature, (c) matters in terms of predicting outcomes, (d) allows for a richer account of contextual forces influencing motivation, and (e) sets the stage for an enriched hierarchical model of achievement motivation. In closing, we discuss various future research directions.     

Personal Computers in the Learning Environment and Student Motivation

Based on cognitive theories of motivation it is argued that, in the absence of computer anxiety, computer assisted learning can enhance several types of intrinsic student motivation because it allows for highly individualized learning.     

Examining the motivational impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal framing and autonomy-supportive versus internally controlling communication style on early adolescents' academic achievement

The present experimental research examined whether framing early adolescents' (11- to 12-year-olds) learning activity in terms of the attainment of an extrinsic (i.e., physical attractiveness) versus intrinsic (i.e., health) goal and communicating these different goal contents in an internally controlling versus autonomy-supportive way affect performance. Both conceptual and rote learning were assessed. Three experimental field studies, 2 among obese and 1 among nonobese participants, confirmed the hypothesis that extrinsic goal framing and internal control undermine conceptual (but not rote) learning, even in comparison with a control group. Study 3 indicated that the positive effect of intrinsic goal framing on conceptual learning was mediated by task involvement, whereas the positive effect of autonomy-supportive communication style on conceptual learning was mediated by relative autonomous motivation.     

Motivational predictors of successful transition from grades 11 to 12 in South Africa

A relatively large number of South African learners drop out of school during the last 2 years of high school. This has important negative consequences for the individual learners, as well as for the country as a whole since it contributes greatly to the high number of unskilled and unemployed people. This study was carried out to explore whether, aside from gender and school environment, learners’ motivation can serve as a predictor of the (un)successful transition of learners from grades 11 to 12 in South Africa. A total of 1,355 grade 11 learners from previously advantaged, transition, and previously disadvantaged school environments in the Free State’s Motheo district participated in the study. Self-determination theory and general theories of learner motivation were used as the underlying theoretical basis for the selection of the predictors. Results showed that the number of unsuccessful learners was much higher among boys and in previously disadvantaged schools. We did not find the importance attached to intrinsic and extrinsic goals to predict the (un)successful transition. We did, however, find that successful transition is associated with higher levels of learner motivation, a more positive attitude towards learning and lower levels of educational anxiety. Finally, in comparison with their unsuccessful peers, learners who were successful in the transition to grade 12 were significantly more autonomously motivated and showed significantly less controlled motivation.     

Study persistence and academic achievement as a function of the type of competing tendencies

In order to understand and predict students’ achievement and persistence at learning activities, many contemporary motivational models consider how much students are motivated for their school work. However, students’ achievement and persistence might not only be affected by their amount of study motivation, but also by the motivation to engage in competing alternative activities, as suggested three decades ago by Atkinson and Birch in their “Dynamics of Action” (1970). Building on this line of theorizing, the present contribution indicates that it is not only instructive to consider the level of students’ motivation for these competing activities, but also the type of activities they engage in, that is leisure vs. working activities. Two studies demonstrated that whereas time spent on working activities is inversely related to study motivation, attitude, persistence and academic achievement, such relationships were not found for leisure time engagement. Spending some time on leisure time activities does not interfere with optimal learning.     

How you provide corrective feedback makes a difference: the motivating role of communicating in an autonomy-supporting way

We relied on self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) to investigate to what extent autonomy-supporting corrective feedback (i.e., feedback that coaches communicate to their athletes after poor performance or mistakes) is associated with athletes' optimal motivation and well-being. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a cross-sectional study with 337 (67.1% males) Greek adolescent athletes (age M = 15.59, SD = 2.37) from various sports. Aligned with SDT, we found through path analysis that an autonomy-supporting versus controlling communication style was positively related to future intentions to persist and well-being and negatively related to ill-being. These relations were partially mediated by the perceived legitimacy of the corrective feedback (i.e., the degree of acceptance of corrective feedback), and, in turn, by intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, and external regulation for doing sports. Results indicate that autonomy-supporting feedback can be still motivating even in cases in which such feedback conveys messages of still too low competence.