Children's Academic Help-Seeking And Its Influencing Factors

Much recent theory and research on academic help-seeking in children treats help-seeking as an important self-regulatory strategy for coping with difficulty .Help-seeking may, however, take different forms,not all of which promote mastery. Many children give up prematurely,sit passively, or persist unsuccessfully on their own, while others remain motivated in the face of difficulty. Since young children are innately curious and eager to learn, why have so many children become passive learners? The present is to investigate factors affecting academic help-seeking, so that we can help children become active learners effectively.Our result indicated:(1) a contextual learning goal resulted in more process-related help-seeking thandid a contextual performance goal. Personal learning goals had a positive influence and personal performance goals had a negative influence on Instrumental help .For children who had Personal learning goals, a contextual learning goal resulted in more process-related help-seeking.(2) Requests for hints were more frequent at both high achievement level and lowachievement level than at intermediate. Achievement level is a moderator between Personal achievement goals and help-seeking.(3) In the group of High-accepted children ,high and low achievement levelchildren were more likely to ask for hints than intermediate ones.High-rejected children requested more executive help.(4) Children with perceptions of high cognitive competence were more likely toseek Instrumental help,while Children with perceptions of low cognitive competence were more likely to seek executive help .(5) Girls requested more Instrumental help than boys. And third graders were morelikely to use Instrumental help than fifth graders.