Adolescents’ goals, self-efficacy, and positive emotions – how important is the learning context?

ABSTRACT

Fostering adolescents’ self-efficacy and positive emotions through learning contexts which induce beneficial achievement goals can prevent motivational decline in adolescents. Achievement goal theory states that the learning context and gender moderate the interplay of self-efficacy, emotions, and achievement goals. This study compared female and male students in teacher-directed learning (TL) with those of students in a learning context based on self-directed learning (SL). With data gathered from questionnaires completed by 828 adolescents (7th/8th grades; M_Age = 13.6; SD = .88), latent mean comparison revealed that female as well as male adolescents in SL report higher means in mastery goals and positive emotions. Results of multigroup structural equation modeling showed that for both female and male students in SL, solely mastery goals are significantly related to both positive emotions and self-efficacy, whereas boys and girls in TL showed different associations: In particular, boys in TL seem to have disadvantageous patterns based on work avoidance orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Achievement goals
• positive emotions
• self-efficacy
• self-directed learning
• age differences
• gender differences
• adolescents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant (01JA1614C) from the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung Germany.

Notes on contributors

Sabine Schweder

Sabine Schweder holds PhDs in school pedagogy. She is research associate at University of Greifswald, at the Institute of Educational Science. Her primary area of empirical research focuses on academic learning, with a special emphasis on self-directed learning.

Diana Raufelder

Diana Raufelder currently works at the Institute of Education, University of Greifswald. Diana does research in Educational Psychology and Empirical Educational Research. Her current project is “SELF - Socio-Emotional Learning Factors.”

Tino Wulff

Tino Wulff is reseach accociate at University of Greifswald, at the Institute of Educational Science. His primary area of empirical research focuses on academic learning, with a special emphasis on self-directed learning.