The Roles of Moral Disengagement and Learned Helplessness Towards International Postgraduate Students’ Academic Procrastination

Abstract

Objective

Supervisors play an important role in international postgraduate students’ academic performance, their insufficient guidance and supervision are the main antecedents for international postgraduate students’ academic procrastination. Meanwhile, international postgraduate students’ disengagement tendency and learned helplessness in dealing with supervisor’s moral disengagement will significantly affect their academic choices and outcomes.

Methods

Based on self-determination theory, this research distributed 350 questionnaires through two-stage time-lagged method and 266 valid questionnaires were recovered. Hierarchical regression analysis examined the direct effect of supervisor’ moral disengagement on international postgraduate students’ academic procrastination, as well as the moderating effect of international postgraduate students’ moral disengagement and learned helplessness.

Results

The results indicated that 1) supervisor’s moral disengagement significantly predicts international postgraduate students’ academic procrastination, 2) international postgraduate students’ moral disengagement and learned helplessness positively moderate the above relation, and 3) international postgraduate students’ learned helplessness positively moderates the moderating effect of international postgraduate students’ moral disengagement.

Conclusion

This study revealed the antecedents and conditions of international postgraduate students’ academic procrastination, which enriched the theoretical connotation and practical application of self-determination theory in the field of international postgraduate students’ education.

Keywords:

• moral disengagement
• academic procrastination
• learned helplessness
• supervisor
• international postgraduate student

Ethical Approval

This research was approved by the ethical review committees of Jiangsu University and Tianjin University of Technology in China, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

Informed Consent

Respondents agreed to participate in this research and gave informed consent.

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful to the editors of Psychology Research and Behavior Management, and the reviewers for providing us with insightful suggestions to make this work more valuable.

Author Contributions

All authors made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that is in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, or in all these areas; took part in drafting, revising or critically reviewing the article; gave final approval of the version to be published; have agreed on the journal to which the article has been submitted; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Fund of China Association for International Education (2018-2019Y018), the Fund of Philosophy and Social Science Research of Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (2020SJB1056), and the Fund of China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE-RE-HG-Y-2021-14).