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How do Achievement Goals Affect Students’ Adjustment in Secondary School?

Wed, April 8, 1:45 to 3:15pm PDT (1:45 to 3:15pm PDT), Los Angeles Convention Center, Floor: Level Two, Room 303B

Abstract

The first year of secondary school represents an important transition as students face an increased academic workload with more subjects studied at higher difficulty levels. Some students are motivated to develop task mastery (mastery-approach goals), others seek to perform better (performance-approach goals) or avoid performing worse (performance-avoidance goals) than others. These different aims are reflected in achievement goals (Elliot & Murayama, 2008). As achievement goals guide students’ learning behaviors and elicit different emotions, they are posited to affect well-being (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999) and are significant for school adjustment (Shim & Finch, 2014). This study examines the effects of achievement goals for English and Mathematics on adjustment in the first year of Secondary school as measured by motivation, well-being, and ill-being outcomes. Although the motivation effects of achievement goals have received much attention in the literature, little is known about their effects on well-being and ill-being.

1591 Secondary 1 students (49% female, 51% male; Mage=12.89 years, SDage = .39) from Singapore participated in this study which was part of the DRivers, Enablers, and pathways of Adolescent developMent in Singapore (DREAMS) project. Among these students, 805 students and 786 students answered achievement goals (mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals) and motivation outcomes (amotivation and academic buoyancy) in reference to English and Mathematics, respectively. All students answered the well-being (psychological well-being) and ill-being (internalizing, attentional, and externalizing problems) outcomes.

In each multiple regression model, all achievement goals were entered as predictors and outcomes were examined individually while controlling for age, gender and academic stream. Results showed that for English and Mathematics, mastery-approach goals positively predicted academic buoyancy and psychological well-being, and they negatively predicted amotivation as well as internalizing, attentional, and externalizing problems. Additionally, performance-approach goals for English positively predicted amotivation as well as internalizing and externalizing problems, and those for Mathematics positively predicted externalizing problems. Interestingly, performance-avoidance goals for English did not predict any outcome. Performance-avoidance goals for Mathematics positively predicted amotivation and internalizing problems, and they negatively predicted academic buoyancy.

The results from this study are aligned with the literature where mastery-approach goals are generally adaptive while performance-avoidance goals are generally maladaptive (Dever et al., 2022; Hulleman et al., 2010; Tian, 2017; Yu & Martin, 2014). Although mixed motivation outcomes are reported for performance-approach goals in the literature (Senko & Dawson, 2017), performance-approach goals were linked to poor motivation and ill-being in this study. Importantly, there are overlaps and subject-specific relationships between achievement goals and outcomes as shown in the results of this study. Teachers could focus on students who adopt performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals in relation to English and Mathematics to better address their motivation problems and alleviate their ill-being. This study also adds to the limited achievement goals studies on well-being and ill-being, and highlights the importance of academic factors in affecting students’ well-being and ill-being.

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