The Constructs And Developmental Features Of Elementary And Middle School Student's Achievement Goal Orientations

This article mainly focuses on the development and validation of scales assessing elementary and middle students' achievement goal orientations based on the quartation of achievement goal orientation (including mastery-approach goal, mastery-avoid goal, performance-approach goal and performance-avoid goal) developed by Pintrich ( 2000 ). The results of studies conducted with from forth grade to ninth grade of elementary and middle school students are used to describe the internal consistency, stability, and construct validity of the scales. The final scales consist of 40 items, which Cronbach's alpha is .86. The scale assessing a mastery-approach goal consists of 12 items, which Cronbach's alpha is .86. The scale consists of 8 items assessing a mastery-avoid goal items which Cronbach's alpha is .72. The scale for performance-approach goal consists of 11 items and its Cronbach's alpha is .82. The scale assessing a performance-avoid goal orientation consists of 9 items and its Cronbach's alpha is .72.Then, we explore the developmental features of from 4th grade to 9th grade students' achievement goal orientations. The sample includes 759 students. Age range is from 8 to 16. There are following conclusions:(1) Four sorts of goal orientations have significant difference on grades and genders; (2) Mastery-approach goal gradually descends with grades; (3) Mastery-avoid goal gradually ascend from forth grade to sixth grade, and gradually descend from seventh grade to ninth grade; (4) Sixth grade students' performance-approach goal is highest, and has significant difference with other five grades students'; (5) The developing trend of performance-avoidgoal is flexuous, highest in ninth grade. (6) In the four sorts of achievement goals, mastery approach goal orientation is the main learning drive to the elementary and middle school students. And we also find that the development level of mastery avoid goal orientation is higher than that of performance approach goal orientation and performance avoid goal orientation, that means mastery avoid goal orientation has great influence on student's learning.We also analyze these developing trends, and put forward some suggestions on how to practice achievement goal theory in school education.