The Impact Of Conscientiousness, Motivation And Volitional Control On Homework Behavior

Homework as an indispensable part of the daily life for middle school students in every country has been considered as an effective education strategy. According to previous research findings , especially on Trautwein's (2006) model of homework, we can conclude that the students'homework effort is influenced by consciousness and homework motivation. Kuhl (1985) designated two distinct categories of motivation between the intentions and implementation of activities: choice motivation and executive motivation, and pointed out that the executive motivation (i.e. volitional control) had largely been neglected. The researcher believes that volitional control should be taken seriously besides homework motivation (as choice motivation) in homework process. Thus, the researcher examined the impact of consciousness, homework motivation and volitional control on homework behaviors based on the data from a sample of 502 middle and high school students, by using multiple regression analysis.The results revealed that:(1) there were differences of homework motivation(i.e. expect and value beliefs) among different grades, gender and subjects: the junior school students had higher motivation than high school students, girls than boys, mathematics than English in overall trend; there were differences of volitional control among grades and gender: it showed a downward trend along with increased grade, and girls had higher volitional control than boys.(2) the academic achievements of students were positively correlated with their homework motivation,volitional control, homework effort; and homework effort proved to be strong predictors of math academic achievement.(3) homework motivation and volitional control proved to be strong predictors of homework effort.(4) homework motivation and volitional control partly mediated the role of student characteristics played on homework effort.(5) consciousness proved to be a strong predictor of homework motivation and homework effort in tow domains- math and English.