The Developmental Trend Of Future Orientation During The Adolescence And Its Relationship With School Engagement And Academic Performance

Future orientation refers to the individual's thinking and planning for the future.Many studies have shown that the development of adolescents' future orientations varies in age,gender,race,and culture.In order to make a more objective and accurate study of the future development of adolescents in the context of Chinese culture,three methods are used to test primary school students,junior high school students,high school students and college students,namely,including future orientation questionnaire,content evaluation method,behavior test method in which the discount task is used to measure whether the subjects can give up the present reward for future greater rewards.Smaller discounting rate indicates that the individual is more likely to value the future.So the size of the discounting will be used in this study as an indicator of the future orientation.The purpose of this study is to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the three measurement methods,to try to propose a more objective and effective test method.At the same time,it explores the relationship between future orientation and school engagement,future orientation and academic achievement respectively.The results are as follows:(1)According to measurement of questionnaire,there is grade difference of adolescents in the future development,but no gender differences.Overall,the score of primary school students was significantly higher than that of junior high school students and high school students,college students significantly higher than high school students,no difference was found between junior high school students and high school students.The results of questionnaire show that the level of primary school students and college students is the highest,followed by junior high school students,and that of high school students is the lowest.(2)There are differences in the development of adolescents in terms of content assessment.The scores of primary school students were significantly lower than those of junior middle school,high school students and college students;the college students significantly higher than primary school,middle school and high school students,no difference was found between junior high school students and high school students.The results of the content evaluation method show that the future orientation of college students is the highest,followed by junior high school students and high school students,and that of primary school students is the lowest.Score of girls in the future orientation was significantly higher than boys.(3)According to measures of behavioral test method(delayed discounting task),difference can be found in development of adolescents in the future orientation,but there is no gender difference.The scores of primary school students were significantly lower than those of junior middle school college students and high school students,It indicated that primary school students pay more attention to the current interests,less consideration for the future,and has a weaker orientation to the future.The delay ability of college students was significantly higher than that of primary school students,but the difference was not significant between junior high school students and high school students.(4)The results of the correlation analysis show that the future orientation of the questionnaire is positively correlated with the school engagement,but not related to the academic performance.Results of content evaluation method in the primary school and middle school show that there is a significant positive correlation between school engagement and academic achievement in the college students,and only in the primary school was positively correlated with school engagement and academic achievement with the academic performance of the second year of junior high school and the college students.It points out that the questionnaire is related to the subjective evaluation index school engagement,the behavior measurement is related to the objective evaluation index academic achievement,and the content evaluation method takes into account the characteristics of both,and is related to the subjective and objective evaluation indexes.The three methods used in this study measured the developmental trend of young people's future orientation and their impact on school engagement and academic achievement.In comparison,the content assessment method is more effective in measuring the trend of the future orientation of adolescents with age,and found that the higher the level of future orientation of young people is,the more schools' effort engaged,and thus the better academic can be performed.