The Effects of Goal Orientation and Feedback Type on Children’s Achievement Motivation and Task Performance

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

From an early age, children learn major and minor tasks in the process of development. Every child may experience failure more than once, yet not all children respond to failure in the same way. Some children are not afraid of failure, enjoy the challenge and try harder with a highly motivated attitude when dealing with demanding tasks. Still, some children hesitate and become helpless when faced with difficult tasks, giving up easily and frustrating themselves with low confidence. These individual differences may exist due to differences in children’s perception of failure and achievement goals. In addition to failure experience, meaningful adult feedback can also have a powerful impact on children’s actual task performance behavior. Thus, this study aimed to examine whether there is a significant difference in 5-year-old children’s achievement motivation depending on their goal orientation and to investigate a noticeable difference in those children’s task performance depending on their goal orientation and feedback type. The participants were 120 Korean children aged 5 years who were recruited from six daycare centers located in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. The gender ratio was almost equal (62 boys and 58 girls) and was divided into two groups: challenge goal orientation (n = 65) and performance goal orientation (n = 55). In each group, children were randomly assigned to either informational or emotional feedback. All research procedures were conducted after approval (IRB No. 1510/001-016). Our major findings are as follows. First, the patterns of achievement motivation were different depending on children’s goal orientation. Children aiming for challenging goals showed positive sentiment about failure and higher expectations for upcoming performance than children aiming for performance goals. Hence, we should encourage performance-oriented children to recognize that everyone can experience failure in learning situations, and to convince them to think of failure as an opportunity to discover new skills, and to be confident in their performance. Second, noticeable differences were observed in the effects of feedback on task performance depending on children’s goal orientation. When informational feedback was provided, challenge-oriented children chose more demanding tasks while performance-oriented children selected the easier task. In contrast, when emotional feedback was presented, children’s task selection pattern was the opposite. These remarkable results indicated that the effect of feedback may differ depending on the type of feedback and children’s goal orientation. Third, regardless of children’s goal orientation, emotional feedback helped children to perform tasks consistently without giving up. Although children's task performance patterns differed depending on their goal orientation and feedback type, emotional feedback still had a great influence on children's motivation to continuously achieve and perform tasks. When children experience failure as they grow up, we need to encourage them to overcome the failure and continue to perform tasks with confidence. If parents and teachers should respect children’s goal orientation first and provide appropriate feedback based on the goal orientation, children would not be frustrated despite the failure experience and would show their willingness to challenge and solve tasks through new strategies or efforts.

Authors

• Hye Rhim Cho, Seoul National University
  Presenting Author

• Kang Yi Lee, Seoul National University
  Non-Presenting Author