The Relationship Between Maternal Parenting And The Reaction To Success And Failure Of Junior Middle School Students: Self-perceived Cognitive Competence As A Mediator

Success and failure are two the chief component of junior middle schoolstudent’s everyday learning. How junior middle school student’s reaction to successand failure have important effect on the future learning. Dweck had differentiate twodifferent responsive patterens to challenge among individuals: some individualsrespond to challenge with helplessness, whereas others responded in amastery-oriented manner. Mastery-oriented responses involve the positiveself-cognitions(individuals attribute their failure to external circumstances, forinstance, not work hard), willingness to sustain engagement with follow-up similartasks and maintain their positive affect in the face of obstacles; Helplessnessresponses involves the negative self-cognitions(individuals attribute their failure topersonal inadequency competence) , diminished enthusiasm and a lack of strategicthinking, along with amplified negative affect in the face of obstacles. Apparentlymastery-oriented pattern was beneficial to individual’s achievement adjustment,whereas helpless pattern was harmful. A wealth of theoretical and empirical attentionhas been directed toward the antecedents of the individual’s responsive patterns in theface of obstacles. Recently, although western psychologists have found that parent’sautonomy support versus control have some effect on individual’s responsive patternsin the face of obstacles, little research, especially empirical research, has directedtoward the relationship between parent’s autonomy support versus control andindividual’s responsive patterns in the face of obstacles. According toBronfenbrenner’s ecological systems framework, there are many factors fromdifferent ecological levels may affect the parent’s autonomy support versus control,for instace: culture and other macroscopical factors. Hereby the present study examineage, gender and socioeconomic status differences in mother’s autonomy supportversus control and its relationship with responsive patterns to success and failureamong junior middle school student. Additionally, fewer research explored the mechanism underlying mother’s autonomy support versus control effects onindividual’s responsive patterns. In sum, based on prior research, we also examinedwhether junior middle school student’s self-perceived cognitive competence wouldmediate the effect of mother’s autonomy support versus control on responsive patternsto success and failure among junior middle school student.To address above issues, 560 student from one junior middle school in Jinan,Shandong Province were include in the cross-sectional study. And Mother’sLearning-related Autonomy Support and Control Scale, Perceived Competence Scalefor Children, Questionnaire of Response to Performance were respectively used tocollect data. The main findings of the study were as follows:1 Compared with male student, mother provided more autonomy support andless control to female student; There was grade differences in the mother’s autonomysupport: seven grade was significantly higher than eight grade and nine grade andthere was no significantly differences between eight grade and nine grade. There wereno significantly differences in the mother’s control among three grades; Familysocioeconomic status was significant positively predicted mother’s autonomy supportand marginal negatively predicted mother’s control.2 There were grade differences in the self-perceived cognitive competence：sevengrade significantly higher than nine grade and marginal higher than eight grade, therewas no significantly differences between eight grade and nine grade.3 Self-perceived cognitive competence could partly mediated the effect ofmother’s autonomy support on positive emotion after success; Self-perceived ofcognitive competence could partly mediated the effect of mother’s autonomy supporton academic motivation after success; Self-perceived of cognitive competence couldpartly mediated the effect of mother’s autonomy support on academic motivationafter failure. And mother’s control had only direct effect on junior middle schoolstudent’s academic motivation after success.