The Effect of Competence-Building Narrative on Chinese Adolescents’ Persistence

Abstract

Persistence is one of the most critical aspects of learning motivation, but little attention has been paid to persistence intervention in the literature. The current study took a perspective from narrative psychology to examine the effect of narrative form on junior middle school students’ ability to persist. Thirty-two students were randomly assigned to the experimental group of competence-building narrative and the control group. While all the students constructed past experiences of success and failure, those in the experimental group were prompted to think from a competence-building perspective. Then both groups solved a figure-based problem, within which the researcher recorded their number of attempts and time spent. Results showed that those who construct past success and failure from a competence-building perspective attempted more times and spent more time on the unsolvable problem.

Keywords:

• narrative psychology
• persistence
• narrative intervention
• adolescents
• motivation

Data Sharing Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of Lingnan Normal University (April 3, 2020).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study. All participants’ parents and their teachers in charge of the class consent to involve in the study.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [18YJC880021], Guangdong Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project [GD20XJY56], Open Project Program of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Development and Education for Special Needs Children [TJ202104], Yanling Excellent Young Teacher Program of Lingnan Normal University [YL20200201], and the 2022 Annual Research Project of Guangdong Education Association [GDES14298].