The Effects Of Goal Priming On Transfer Of Analogous Problem-solving Strategies

One of the primary aims regarding the new elementary education curriculum in ThePeople Republic of China is to effectively accelerate the transfer of learning strategies,andit is also an important subject towards the development of educational psychology. Mostprevious studies regarding learning transfer have not paid a great deal of attentionconcerning the motivation of learning. However there is a direct and indirect relationshipbetween learning motivation and learning transfer. This relationship is complex, whetherthe practical side or theoretical side is being considered. We can discover the mechanism oftransfer by combining the motivation of learning and the transfer of learning strategies.The goal of this study was to research the goals priming influences on the transfer ofproblem solving strategies. The methods that were adopted to test this aim were settingexperiments, questionnaire and observation methods. For this study 256 primary schoolstudents from Grade Two and Grade Five were used as subjects. During the firstexperiment, goals priming took place before the learning of the strategy, affecting thelearning as well as transfer of the strategy. In the second experiment, goals priming tookplace after the learning of the strategy and before the transfer task, affecting only theprocess of transfer. The study adopted Logistic regression and ANOVAs to deal with thedata coming from the experiments.These are the results:(1)The group of participants in the mastery goals condition had succeeded in transfer,and found the highest rate of transfer in grade two and grade five both experiments.(2)The interaction between perceived ability and the type of the other goalsorientation was not significant, but it has a fringe significant condition between perceivedability and performance-avoid orientation.(3)The fifth graders were more likely to transfer the strategy than second graders byapplying the cognitive strategies.(4)The achievement goals orientations in setting experiments partially correspondwith the self-reported achievement goals orientations : the participants in mastery goalpriming reported higher mastery motivational profile, and motivational profiles with highmastery goals were more likely to be associated with successful transfer.