What Kinds of Math Motivation Add Up to Language Achievement?

• In Event: Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: Motivational Processes Related to Goals, Emotions, Interest, and Self-Regulation

Abstract

Using a large data set of middle school student responses to motivation questionnaires, as well as achievement test data and demographic information, this study examines the interplay between motivational orientations and achievement by using ordinary least squares regressions to look at associations between students’ language achievement test results and their expressed achievement goals, feelings of efficacy, and sense of task value toward math. While math mastery goals and math efficacy were found to be positively and significantly associated with both math achievement and with language achievement, the influence of math task value on math and language achievement outcomes was mostly explained away once math efficacy and other controls were included in the model.

Author

• Christopher Stillwell, University of California - Irvine