Abstract
The teaching and learning of mathematics in schools has drawn tremendous attention since the education reform in Taiwan. In addition to assessing cognitive abilities, Taiwan Assessment of Student Achievement in Mathematics (TASA-MAT) collects background information to help depict average student achievement in schools in an educational context. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between student achievement in mathematics and student background characteristics. The data for this study was derived from the sample for the 2005 TASA-MAT Sixth-Grade Main Survey in Taiwan. The average age of the sixth-grade students in Taiwan is 11 years old, as was the sample for the 2005 TASA-MAT. Student socioeconomic status (SES) and student learning-goal orientation were specified as predictor variables of student performance in mathematics. The results indicate that the better performance in mathematics tended to be associated with a higher SES and stronger mastery goal orientation. The SES factor accounted for 4.98% of the variance, and student learning-goal orientation accounted for an additional 10.61% of the variance. The major implication obtained from this study was that goal orientation was much more significant than SES in predicting student performance in mathematics. In addition, the Rasch model treatment of the ordinal response-category data is a novel approach to scoring the goal-orientation items, with the corresponding results in this study being satisfactory.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: goals, structures, and motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 261–271.
Andrich, D. (1978). A rating formulation for ordered response categories. Psychometrika, 43, 357–374.
Barron, K.E. & Harackiewicz, J.M. (2001). Achievement goals and optimal motivation: testing multiple goal models. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 706–722.
Butler, R. (1987). Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects of different feed-back conditions on motivational perceptions, interest, and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(4), 474–482.
Covington, M.V. (2000). Goal theory, motivation, and school achievement: an integrative review. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 171–200.
Dweck, C.S. (2000). Self-theories. Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group.
Dweck, C.S. & Leggett, E.L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychology Review, 95(2), 256–273.
Elliot, A.J. (1999). Approach and avoidance motivation and achievement goals. Educational Psychologist, 34(3), 169–189.
Elliot, E.S. & Dweck, C.S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 5–12.
Hawkins, E.F., Stancavage, F.B., & Dossey, J.A. (1998). School policies and practices affecting instruction in mathematics: Findings for the national assessment of education progress. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, NCES 98–495.
Masters, G.N. (1982). A Rasch model for partial credit scoring. Psychometrika, 47, 149–174.
Meece, J.L. & Holt, K. (1993). A pattern analysis of students’ achievement goals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(4), 582–590.
Midgley, C., Maehr, M., Hruda, L. & Anderman, E. (2000). Manual for the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
Pintrich, P. (2000). An achievement goal theory perspective on issues in motivation terminology, theory and research. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 92–104.
Pintrich, P.R. & Schunk, D.H. (1996). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lin, CJ., Hung, PH., Lin, SW. et al. THE POWER OF LEARNING GOAL ORIENTATION IN PREDICTING STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 7, 551–573 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-008-9132-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-008-9132-0