T Bouffard | PubMed Health

PubMed1998

A developmental study of the relation between combined learning and performance goals and students' self-regulated learning.

BACKGROUND: Current goal theory models assume that learning goals are adaptive in academic contexts and that performance goals lead to less positive patterns of motivation and self-regulation. These models also implicitly assume that the adaptive nature of these goals is the same at all academic levels. AIMS: The objectives of this study were to examine how combined learning and performance goals are related to self-regulation and academic performance, and whether there is a developmental trend in these relations. SAMPLE: A total of 1072 junior (N = 408, mean age = 11.9), middle (N = 323, mean age = 13.7), and senior (N = 341, mean age = 15.7) high school students were examined. METHOD: They were administered a questionnaire assessing their learning and performance goals and reported their self-regulatory strategies while studying. RESULTS: Analyses showed that whatever their performance goals, having high learning goals promoted younger students' self-regulation. They also showed that, contrary to the findings for younger students, performance goals were related to self-regulation and academic performance at higher school levels. Furthermore, high performance goals were found to alleviate the negative effects of low learning goals for older students. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the adaptive nature of goals could change across development. This could be due to contextual factors such as the increasing importance of obtaining good grades to access higher academic levels. Future research should address this issue.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

The relation between accuracy of self-perception and cognitive development.

BACKGROUND: It is now widely recognised that student's self-perceptions of competence have an effect on their behaviours and learning. Previous studies have shown that children only gradually develop the ability to evaluate accurately their own competence. One possible explanation for this is that younger children have not reached a level of cognitive development required to perform such evaluations. AIMS: The objective of these two studies was to examine the hypothesis that children at higher levels of cognitive development should be more accurate in their self-appraisal of competence than children of the same age at lower levels of cognitive development. STUDY 1. SAMPLE: The sample included 173 elementary school children, with almost equal gender representation. Children were first examined in fourth grade (mean age = 10.0, SD = .77) and for the next two years. METHOD: Each child responded to questionnaires of self-perceptions about reading and to a standardised test of reading. Year-end grades in reading were used as a measure of performance. RESULTS: The results show that there was no significant difference between high and low children in grade 6, but that the correlation between self-perceptions and performance was significantly higher among high ability children than among low ability children both in grades 4 and 5. STUDY 2. SAMPLE: The sample included 153 elementary school children in grade 3 (mean age = 9.1, SD = .73) and 185 in grade 5 (mean age = 11.2, SD = .75), with almost equal gender representation. METHOD: Each child responded to questionnaires of self-perceptions about mathematics and to a standardised IQ test. Year-end grades in mathematics were used as a measure of performance. RESULTS: The correlation between self-perception and performance was significantly higher among high IQ children than among low IQ children in grade 3. However, in grade 5, high and low IQ children were similarly accurate in their self-perceptions. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the development of accurate self-perceptions is not strictly a matter of age or school level but is also related to cognitive development.

Child↗