An exploratory value-cost approach in predicting college students’ achievement goals in multicultural education

ABSTRACT

Student resistance is inevitable in the process of multicultural education, but few researchers have explored the dynamics of student motivation. The purpose of this study was to help bridging the gap between motivation and multicultural education by examining the value and cost beliefs of college students in diversity learning, and how those beliefs predict their achievement goals. Participants were 173 college students who were predominantly education majors (86.1%), White (65.9%), and female (80.9%). Exploratory factor analysis results showed that students mainly harbored value and cost beliefs in diversity learning. Multivariate multiple regression analyses results demonstrated an overall significant predictive power of students’ value-cost beliefs over their achievement goals. In particular, students who perceived higher values of multicultural education reported more mastery-approach goals, whereas those who perceived higher cost of multicultural education endorsed more performance-approach goals. While confirming the importance of instilling high values to help cultivate optimal learning goals for college students, the results suggest the potential detrimental effects of perceived high cost of multicultural education. The study has important implications for educators to improve student motivation in diversity learning. Future research can further examine the factor structure of college students’ value-cost beliefs and their longitudinal effects on achievement goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Value
• cost
• achievement goals
• multicultural education
• student motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yan Yang

Yan Yang, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in Department of Educational Technology and Foundations, College of Education, University of West Georgia. She published over a dozen articles on peer-reviewed journals with national/international circulations. Her recent book “Knowledge or praxis? An Attributional perspective in multicultural teacher education” is among the first in adopting a systematic motivational approach to multicultural education.