STUDENTS’ MOTIVATIONAL BELIEFS, SELF-REGULATION STRATEGIES AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT

Mousoulides, N. and Philippou, G. (2005) STUDENTS’ MOTIVATIONAL BELIEFS, SELF-REGULATION STRATEGIES AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT. Proceedings of the 29th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 3, pp. 321-328. Melbourne: PME.

This study examined the relationships between motivational beliefs, self regulation strategies use, and mathematics achievement in pre-service teachers. They developed a model showing connections and causal relationships among cognitive and affective factors, which was tested on the basis of self report data collected from the teachers using a modified version of MSLQ and a mathematics achievement test. They found from the data that self-efficacy is a strong predictor of mathematics achievement and self-regulation strategies use having a negative effect on achievement. The first finding of this study is of no surprise, students how have high self efficacy, believe they can “do it” are more likely to be better students overall. The secondary findings were surprising because it does not make sense that self regulation would have a negative effect on ones achievement. They conclude their findings stating that teachers need to create an “environments in which students can learn to regulate their learning process and design tasks that help students improve their planning, organizational and metacognitive abilities.” This seems contradicting as their findings showing a negative relationship to self regulation and achievement. Perhaps this is the recommendation because if students are better trained at the use of regulation strategies then their achievement would be positively effected.


Some Quotes:

Pintrich (1999) describes self-regulated learning as an active, constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning plan actions and monitor, regulate and control their cognition, motivation and
behavior.

Pintrich and De Groot (1990) proposed that there exist three motivational components that may be
linked to the three corresponding dimensions of self-regulated learning, namely: (a) an expectancy component, which refers to students’ beliefs about their expected success in performing a task, (b) a value component, which concerns students’ appreciation of and beliefs about the importance of the task for them and (c) an affective component,comprised of students’ emotional reactions to the task

As reported by Pintrich (1999), mastery goal orientation was positively related to the use of cognitive
strategies as well as self-regulatory strategies. In addition, mastery goal orientation was positively related to actual performance in the class. On the contrary, extrinsic goal orientation was consistently found to be negatively related to self-regulated learning and performance.

A mastery goal orientation refers to a concern with learning and mastering the task using self-set standards and self-improvement. Extrinsic orientation refers to expected reward or avoiding punishment, as the main criterion for investing resources e.g., pleasing teachers or parents (Pintrich, 1999).

Resources

Pintrich, P.R. (1999). The role of motivation in promoting and sustaining self-regulated
learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 459-470.

Pintrich, P.R. & De Groot E. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of
classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), pp. 33-50.