Achievement Goal Orientation and Academic Engagement: Comparison
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Enhancing academic engagement in university students can help enrich students’ educational experience. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources Model and the Job Demand-Resources Model, exploring the links between undergraduates’ achievement goal orientation and academic engagement (AE), by examining the mediating functions of perceived school climate (PSC) and academic self-efficacy (ASE).

  • achievement goal orientation
  • perceived school climate

1. Background

Education is a solid foundation for a country’s economic and social sustainability. The report of the 41st UNESCO General Conference on 10 November 2021 explores how to improve the quality of student learning in a challenging future. Improving students’ AE is the key to improving their quality of study activities and education experience. AE is a rich, stable and sustained positive psychological state of individuals in learning activities and is divided into three dimensions: vitality, dedication and absorption [1]. Research has found that not only does AE positively correlate with academic performance [2,3][2][3] and promote university students’ academic achievement [4], but AE can also reduce college dropout rates. The reduction in the dropout rate of university students is an effective way to achieve equity and improve the standard of education [5,6][5][6]. Antecedents affecting AE have been of interest to researchers, such as with motivational factors—particularly how they positively [7] and negatively [8] predict the impact of achievement goal orientation on AE. However, the mechanisms by which achievement goal orientation influences AE in university student populations and how university students self-regulate their learning activities have not received sufficient attention from researchers. To address this gap, this study proposes a mediation model drawing on the Conservation of Resources (COR) Model [9] and the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) Model [10], aiming to explore the mechanisms by which university students’ achievement goal orientation influences AE and explain how PSC and ASE can act as resources to promote self-regulated learning among university students.

2. Achievement Goal Orientation and Academic Engagement (AE)

Goal orientation is an important topic in the field of achievement motivation research. The dominant goal influences individual motivation and has a decisive impact on individual achievement behavior. Achievement goal orientation is a central component of student motivation and their ability to self-regulate learning [11,12][11][12]. Four dimensions of achievement goals are commonly used in existing research [7,8,13,14][7][8][13][14]. In tResearchis study, we ders draw on a couple of these four dimensions of achievement goals to verify the effect of different types of goals on AE in university students. The literature demonstrates that the association of mastery-avoidance goals and performance-approach goals with AE is controversial [8,12,15,16][8][12][15][16]. The present study was designed to verify the consistency of the actual observed phenomena with the results of existing studies and to investigate whether the findings of existing studies could be reproduced. Therefore, only two achievement goal dimensions were selected: MAGs and PAGs, in order to examine the influence of these goal orientations on AE in university students. MAGs are when individuals focus more on developing their skills and abilities, facilitating their own learning, understanding the content and completing or mastering a learning task [17]. PAGs are where individuals are more concerned with avoiding performing worse than others [18,19][18][19]. It was found that MAGs were able to positively predict AE [7,20,21][7][20][21]. PAGs often negatively predict AE [8] and academic achievement [20], leading to college dropouts and even depression [13]. It is evident that various kinds of goals can serve different purposes. Individuals who are driven by mastery-oriented goals define and evaluate their abilities as self-oriented or task-oriented, which tend to motivate them intrinsically; individuals who are driven by performance-oriented goals define and evaluate their abilities as more concerned with whether their performance is due to others, which leads to individuals being more susceptible to extrinsic motivation.

3. Mediating Effects of Perceived School Climate (PSC)

Extrinsic factors such as relational-based and environmental variables [17] can influence the relations between the two main study variables. For example, PSC has been shown to significantly influence students’ AE and academic achievement [22]. Social constructivism suggests that students learn by constructing cognitive schemas and internalizing knowledge into their own cognitive structures through social interactions with others [23]. In particular, school life is the primary place where students construct their own knowledge through interactions; students’ school experiences can influence their engagement and achievement—demonstrating the relevance one’s environment has on shaping learning experiences [24]. Students’ PSC are students’ intuitive feelings regarding the school climate expressed as their satisfaction with the living environment (e.g., structures, relationships and culture) [25]. Teachers have a major influence on students’ AE, particularly cognitive engagement [26]. Students who perceive teachers’ expectations and motivation are more likely to be motivated and develop an interest in learning [27].
However, there are differences in the perception of classroom climates between students which are affected by differences in goals; students in the same class perceived classroom goal structures differently [28]. Students who are performance goal-oriented prefer overt assessment by teachers, while students who are avoidance goal-oriented do not like learning tasks with mastery goals and they do not like challenging learning tasks [29]. The study found that positive PSC enhances students’ self-beliefs and contributes to students’ AE, which in turn affects their academic achievement [30]. PSC is plastic [31] and students are able to filter, perceive, interpret and translate the school climate through achievement goal orientation, which promotes the internalization of students’ motivation to learn and thus influences their AE.

4. Mediating Effects of Self-Efficacy (ASE)

In addition, the impact of goals on AE prediction is compromised if undergraduates are not confident in completing their learning activities [32]. Thus, the study must also consider the mediating role of the ASE, which is the individual’s expectation and judgment of being capable of completing the learning activities [33]. For university students, the ASE is a combination of recognition of the quality of their studies and confidence in their studies [34]. The higher the ASE, the more willing students are to engage in their studies [1,35,36][1][35][36]. ASE has also been shown to have a motivational effect on students’ AE for overcoming learning difficulties [35,36][35][36].
Students regulate their own learning through the interaction of two factors: the learning objectives and the ASE that influences the achievement of those objectives. When students are satisfied with their learning goals, they feel empowered to improve their abilities [36]. Thus, it appears that ASE has a medial role. Overall, achievement goal orientation directly affects university students’ ASE [20]. Students who succeed in an academic environment are more likely to effectively regulate the interaction of internal goal orientation and ASE [37]. It is clear that an active learning goal orientation (LGO), as well as a stronger ASE, are important mechanisms and viable ways to promote academic achievement among university students. In particular, positive learning goals can promote students’ performance by improving their ASE.

5. The Chain Mediating Effect of Perceived School Climate (PSC) and Academic Self-Efficacy (ASE)

The impact of the learning climate on individual students’ academic performance [38] is an important factor that can influence the role different types of goals have on AE. Examples of the classroom climate components that can determine ASE are teaching objectives, teacher motivation and expectations [39]. Positive student experiences in the school environment can counteract feelings of incompetence [40] and ameliorates the influence on one’s willingness to learn [41]. The learning environment can trigger changes in the ASE; this learning environment creates a sense of belonging to the subject, which is an important cause of change in ASE [42]. The more positive learning experiences teachers bring to students, the higher their ASE and the more actively they are involved in learning [43]. When students are able to help their peers solve problems, they see themselves as someone their peers can rely on, they are more motivated to explore and learn more independently and they find it fun to share solutions to difficult problems with their peers, which leads to an increase in their ASE [44].

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