When Perfectionism Is Coupled With Low Achievement: The Effects on Academic Engagement and Help-Seeking in Middle School

• In Event: Motivational, Cognitive, and Dispositional Antecedents of Academic Help Seeking

Abstract

Academic help seeking describes how adolescents may socially deal with academically challenging situations. The three main forms of help-seeking behaviors include: help-seeking avoidance (i.e., not asking for help), adaptive help seeking (i.e., asking for explanation facilitating personal understanding), and expedient help seeking (e.g., asking for a ready-made answer without explanation, copying others work). Although adaptive academic help seeking is an important and effective self-regulatory strategy, many early adolescents avoid asking teachers for help even when they need it (Ryan, Patrick, & Shim, 2005). When help requests are directed toward peers, students often take an expedient help-seeking approach (Karabenick, 2011). Thus, investigating individual factors that predict help-seeking patterns will provide greater detail regarding adolescents’ classroom engagement.
In this study, we considered both perfectionism tendencies and achievement as important individual factors predicting academic help seeking. Two distinct dimensions of perfectionism, perfectionism strivings (PS: striving for challenging goals and standards) and perfectionism concerns (COM: concerns about mistakes and negative evaluation), have been considered as adaptive and maladaptive forms of perfectionism, respectively (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990; Hewitt & Flett, 1991). Given that academic help seeking may mean public acknowledgments of incompetence, this may be particularly threatening for perfectionistic individuals who are concerned about making mistakes. While examining the association between two dimensions of perfectionism and engagement, we also considered the moderating role of achievement level. Perfectionism does not always lead to high performance (Bieling, Israeli, Smith, & Antony, 2003), depending on the type of perfectionism that individuals possess and how perfectionism tendencies are channeled. Drawing from prior research showing that students with maladaptive beliefs tend to respond poorly to setbacks (Grant & Dweck, 2003; Shim & Ryan, 2005), we hypothesize that low achieving students may experience more debilitating aspects of perfectionistic tendencies.
The data were collected from a sample of 169 middle school students with respect to their perfectionism tendencies (PS and COM), engagement (emotional engagement, behavioral engagement, disruptive behavior, avoidance of help seeking, expedient help seeking and adaptive help seeking). Given that all engagement measures were taken in the context of their math classrooms, semester-end math grades were taken as indicators of academic achievement. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses (Tables 1 and 2) were conducted after controlling for gender. Interaction terms were decomposed by the procedure proposed by Aiken and West (1991, Figures 1-3). The results indicated that COM was unrelated to most outcome variables but was positively related to help seeking avoidance. This pattern was stronger among students with low PS. While PS was related to a desirable pattern of engagement (i.e., higher behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and adaptive help seeking amongst peers), this was not the case for low achieving students. Although modest in magnitude, the significant interactions suggested that PS did not buffer low achieving students against expedient help seeking and disruptive behaviors. Low achieving perfectionistic students may suffer more than high achieving perfectionistic students, possibly due to widening gaps between their desire to meet high standards and their actual performance.

Authors

• Sungok Serena Shim, Ball State University

• Lisa DaVia Rubenstein, Ball State University

• Christopher W. Drapeau, Ball State University