CLASSROOM GOAL STRUCTURE, STUDENT MOTIVATION AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Academic achievement has become a trending issue of priority to make students academic achievement better and higher (Azmoundeh, 2003). Academic achievement cannot be executed outside the classroom because from this area where transfer thought begins and students presence in classroom impacts improvement of their ability in doing their best to achieve academic excellence (Appleton,2007). The Nigerian classroom has changed significantly over the past 25 years. Computers and interactive soware are common in most classrooms today, and rows of student desks have been replaced with moveable tables and chairs that promote collaborative learning among two or more students. Many states and private schools have reduced class size to increase learning opportunities, especially for young or high-risk students (Elias,2002). In America, reform at the middle school level has introduced block scheduling, advisory teams, schools-within-schools, and other structural changes to meet the developmental needs of young adolescents (Eccles 2004). Additionally, major professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have called for paradigm shis in how teachers think about learning and teaching. Rather than focusing on rote learning and memorization, curriculum standards that began to emerge in the early 1990s emphasized the importance of individual inquiry, problem solving, collaborative learning, and mastery of key concepts. As these reforms were beginning to take hold, new federal legislation, the Leave No Child Le Behind Act of 2001, was enacted to increase accountability and performance standards for public schools. It is anticipated that this new legislation will close achievement gaps and ensure that all students, regardless of any existing disadvantage, will make significant achievement gains in school (Maehr,1994) Classroom goal structure are used to assess achievement goals, and the influence of different achievement goals on various developmental outcomes, including measures of motivation to learn, classroom engagement and adjustment, and academic achievement ( Ames, 1990).

Educational reform has mandated that every child be granted the educational opportunities that he/she needs to succeed academically. An individual learner’s achievement goal orientation may be further influenced by the goal orientation of the classroom context (Ames & Archer, 1988; Maehr & Midgley, 1996; Midgley & Urdan, 2001). Teachers who emphasize a learning or mastery goal orientation in their classroom tend to use such practices as collaborative or other forms of group learning, more learner-centered approaches to instruction, an emphasis on eort and improvement, and more authentic, individualized assignments and assessments, such as the use of portfolios. In contrast, teachers who emphasize a performance goal orientation tend to emphasize competition, grades, comparison and performance (Anderman & Maehr, 1994). Anderman and Young (1994) found that the use of performance-oriented instructional strategies was related to lower levels of mastery goal orientation in science classrooms.

Anderman and Anderman (1999) administered the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey (PALS; Midgley, Maehr, Hicks, Roeser, Urdan, Anderman, Kaplan, Arunkumar, & Middleton, 1997) including the perceptions of classroom goal structure subscale. This study supported the findings of the Anderman and Young (1994) study, and demonstrated that students’ perceptions of the goal structure in the classroom predicted their personal goal orientations. Roeser, Midgley, and Urdan (1996) showed that eighth grade students’ perceptions of a task goal structure in the classroom was positively related to self-eicacy which was mediated through personal task goals leading their academic achievement. In contrast, perceiving a relative-ability classroom goal structure was negatively related to self-eicacy as mediated through personal task goals. Salisbury-Glennon and Gorrell (1999) found that sixth and seventh grade students in a classroom context that was observed to have a mastery oriented task goal structure demonstrated a significantly greater use of the self-regulated learning strategies of goalsetting and planning, self-evaluation, and seeking social assistance from adults than sixth and seventh grade students at the same school, but who were in a classroom that was observed to have a performance oriented task goal structure.. Classroom and other learning environments have frequently been described in terms of the ways in which certain kinds of instructional demands, situational constraints, or psychosocial characteristics relate to various cognitive and affective outcomes in students. However, there has been little systematic analysis of actual classroom structures examining how certain structures within the classroom can make dierent goals salient. Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1984; Stipek & Daniels, 1988 identify certain structures that have been found to impact a range of motivational variables, especially how students view their ability and the degree to which ability becomes an evaluative dimension of the classroom. These structures include, but are not limited to, the design of tasks and learning activities, evaluation practices and use of rewards, and distribution of authority or responsibility. Classroom goal structure is divide into three dimensions: mastery goal orientation(understanding teaching materials),performance approach(students competition for obtaining better score and their encouragements) and performance avoidance(students tries not to lag behind, this means that they avoid obtaining low scores(caleon,2013) classroom goal structure is one of the factor suggested to the impact of student’s academic achievement and is formed based on the goals and values of the school(alkharusi,2015). Midgley (2007) subsequently applied the trichotomous model of personal achievement goals to the classroom structure by differentiating• the performance goal structure in term of approach and avoidance. This resulted in three separate classroom goal structures a master goal structure, in which the classroom environment comes on emerging in academic work to develop competence, especially task and interpersonally based competence (b) personal performance approach goal structure, in which the classroom environment focuses on engaging in academic work to demonstrate competence, especially normative competence and (c) a performance avoidance goal structure, in which the classroom environment focuses on engaging in academic work to avoid demonstrating incompetence, especially normative incompetence.