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The Motivation-Achievement Paradox in International Educational Achievement Tests: Toward a Better Understanding

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The Psychology of Asian Learners

Abstract

There is a recurrent paradox in the data of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): within each participating country, there is a positive correlation between students’ learning motivation and achievement; when aggregating the data at country level, this correlation becomes negative. Using PISA data across 64 countries, we investigate the association of motivation and achievement within and between countries and attempt to explain the paradox with three measures indicative of culturally preferred scale usage: cultural response style, overclaiming, and anchoring vignettes. We confirmed the paradox and found that the three measures, in particular anchoring vignettes, could partially explain the negative association between motivation and achievement at country level. Our study is intellectually indebted to the tradition, initiated by David Watkins, to go beyond a simple classification of Chinese learners as focusing on rote memory learning. We illustrate how core Chinese values impinge on educational motivation and achievement and can help to explain seemingly paradoxical cross-cultural differences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands

    Jia He & Fons J. R. Van de Vijver

  2. Department of Psychology, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    Fons J. R. Van de Vijver

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Fons J. R. Van de Vijver

Authors
  1. Jia He
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  2. Fons J. R. Van de Vijver
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Correspondence to Jia He .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Ronnel B. King

  2. Department of Psychology Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China

    Allan B. I. Bernardo

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He, J., Van de Vijver, F.J.R. (2016). The Motivation-Achievement Paradox in International Educational Achievement Tests: Toward a Better Understanding. In: King, R., Bernardo, A. (eds) The Psychology of Asian Learners. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-576-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-576-1_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-287-575-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-287-576-1

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