A short-term longitudinal study of stability and change in achievement goal profiles

Exploring the Interplay between Stress Perception and Approach-Avoidance Achievement Goal Orientation among Rural Students in College: A Longitudinal Study in China

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between stress perception and achievement goals among rural college students in China. Using a two-wave random intercept cross-lagged model, this study analyzed data from a longitudinal survey conducted at 15 public universities in Beijing. First, there was a significant decline in stress levels among Chinese rural students from their junior to senior years. Second, the achievement goal orientations of these students remained relatively stable during the period. Third, while no significant association was found between approach goals and stress perception, a clear positive reciprocal relationship emerged between avoidance goals and stress perception. These results suggest that educators should focus on alleviating the stress experienced by rural college students through academic, employment, and interpersonal support to break the vicious cycle of stress perception and avoidance goal orientation. Future research should further explore the influence of diverse group characteristics and emotional states on these outcomes.

Depression and approach-avoidance achievement goals of Chinese undergraduate students: A four-wave longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE

The study explored the prospective relations between depression and approach-avoidance achievement goals of undergraduate students in China.

METHODS

2473 full-time undergraduates reported their depression and achievement goals annually from the freshman to the senior year. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and cross-lagged models.

RESULTS

Students' achievement goals decreased gradually during the first 3 years but rose in the fourth year, and the avoidance goals appeared to be less prevalent than the approach goals over time. Depression was negatively associated with approach goals, whereas positively correlated with avoidance goals. Depression in the freshman and sophomore years resulted in more avoidance goals 1 year later, and the depressive problems in the junior year predicted the decline of approach goals in the senior year.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study highlighted the deleterious effects of depression on the achievement goals of college students.

Tracking Changes in Students' Online Self-Regulated Learning Behaviors and Achievement Goals Using Trace Clustering and Process Mining

Success in online and blended courses requires engaging in self-regulated learning (SRL), especially for challenging STEM disciplines, such as physics. This involves students planning how they will navigate course assignments and activities, setting goals for completion, monitoring their progress and content understanding, and reflecting on how they completed each assignment. Based on Winne & Hadwin’s COPES model, SRL is a series of events that temporally unfold during learning, impacted by changing internal and external factors, such as goal orientation and content difficulty. Thus, as goal orientation and content difficulty change throughout a course, so might students’ use of SRL processes. This paper studies how students’ SRL behavior and achievement goal orientation change over time in a large (N = 250) college introductory level physics course taught online. Students’ achievement goal orientation was measured by repeated administration of the achievement goals questionnaire-revised (AGQ-R). Students’ SRL behavior was measured by analyzing their clickstream event traces interacting with online learning modules via a combination of trace clustering and process mining. Event traces were first divided into groups similar in nature using agglomerative clustering, with similarity between traces determined based on a set of derived characteristics most reflective of students’ SRL processes. We then generated causal nets for each cluster of traces via process mining and interpreted the underlying behavior and strategy of each causal net according to the COPES SRL framework. We then measured the frequency at which students adopted each causal net and assessed whether the adoption of different causal nets was associated with responses to the AGQ-R. By repeating the analysis for three sets of online learning modules assigned at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, we examined how the frequency of each causal net changed over time, and how the change correlated with changes to the AGQ-R responses. Results have implications for measuring the temporal nature of SRL during online learning, as well as the factors impacting the use of SRL processes in an online physics course. Results also provide guidance for developing online instructional materials that foster effective SRL for students with different motivational profiles.

Striving for Success but at What Cost? Subject-Specific Achievement Goal Orientation Profiles, Perceived Cost, and Academic Well-Being

Most studies utilizing a person-oriented approach to investigating students’ achievement goal orientation profiles have been domain-general or focused on a single domain (usually mathematics), thus excluding the possibility of identifying distinct subject-specific motivational profiles. In this study, we looked into this by examining upper secondary school students’ subject-specific achievement goal orientation profiles simultaneously in mathematics and English. As distinct profiles might contribute to how students invest time and effort in studying, we also examined differences in perceived subject-specific cost (i.e., effort required, emotional cost, opportunity cost) among students with different profiles and how this was linked with students’ more general academic well-being (i.e., school engagement, burnout). The 434 Finnish general upper secondary school students participating in the study were classified based on their achievement goal orientations in the two subjects using latent profile analysis, and the predictions of the latent profile on distal outcomes (i.e., measures of cost and academic well-being) were examined within the mixture model. Five divergent achievement goal orientation profiles were identified: indifferent (29%), success-oriented (26%), mastery-oriented (25%), English-oriented, math-avoidant (14%), and avoidance-oriented (6%). The English-oriented, math-avoidant students showed the most distinct domain-specificity in their profile but, in general, profiles indicated more cross-domain generality than specificity. Overall, mastery-oriented students showed the most adaptive academic well-being, while avoidance-oriented students were the least engaged. Success-oriented students were characterized by high multiple goals in both subjects, elevated costs, and high scores on both positive (engagement) and negative (burnout) well-being indicators. The English-oriented, math-avoidant students perceived studying math as costly. The findings suggest that addressing students’ achievement motivation in different subjects may be useful for recognizing factors endangering or fostering student learning and well-being.

Work-related learning in the transition from higher education to work: The role of the development of self-efficacy and achievement goals

BACKGROUND

Work-related learning is particularly important at the start of graduates' careers. Preparing students for work-related learning is a chief aim of higher education, demonstrating its relevance when investigating the transition to work.

AIM

This study aimed to investigate the role of personal factors for work-related learning during the transition from higher education to work. This study took a longitudinal and person-centred approach by examining differences in work-related learning between different motivational profiles based on the conjoint development of self-efficacy and achievement goals.

SAMPLE

Questionnaires were administered four times, starting in the beginning of students' final year of higher education until 4 months after graduation (N = 814).

METHODS

In order to assess the development of the personal factors, different multi-indicator latent growth curve models were estimated. Afterwards, a multidimensional latent class growth analysis was used to identify latent profiles of participants with similar growth trajectories. Differences in work-related learning were investigated by a multivariate analysis of variance.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The results revealed an average increase in self-efficacy, learning-goal, and performance-approach orientation, indicating that the transition to work triggers change in these personal factors. Performance-avoidance orientation decreased on average. Four distinct motivational profiles were discerned: strongly efficacious and approach-oriented, moderate efficacious and approach-oriented, moderate efficacious and learning-oriented, and undecided profile. Furthermore, differences were found concerning work-related learning, in which the strongly efficacious and approach-oriented profile reported more participation in formal and informal learning activities using personal sources, while the undecided profile showed least participation in the latter.