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Achievement Goal Orientation across Gender and Ethnicity in a Community College Honors Program
The study investigates how achievement goal orientation varies by gender and ethnicity among community college honors program students. It identifies that females are more likely to adopt avoidance orientations in competitive environments and explores the impact of cultural differences on goal orientation. The results indicate non-significant differences across genders and ethnicities, emphasizing the need for further research on achievement and goal orientations in diverse educational contexts.
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Achievement Goal Orientation across Gender and Ethnicity in a Community College Honors Program
- 1. Achievement Goal Orientation acrossGender and Ethnicity in a Community College Honors Program Scott R. Furtwengler, University of Houston Candidacy Defense Monday, November 18, 2013
- 2. Outline • • • • • • • • Overview of theproblem Purpose of the current study Brief overview of extant literature Methodology Results Discussion References Questions
- 3. Overview of theproblem • In a competitive, performance-oriented environment, females are more likely than males to exhibit maladaptive behavior by adopting avoidance orientation (Bear, 1998; Shucard & Hillman, 1990). • Ethnicity may reflect cultural differences in goal orientation, resulting in maladaptive behavior by adopting avoidance orientation (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, and Sheldon, 2001).
- 4. Purpose of thecurrent study • Research questions: – How does achievement goal orientation vary across gender and ethnicity in a community college honors program?
- 5. Overview of extantliterature • Achievement goal orientation • Post-secondary honors programs • The community college context
- 6. Achievement Goal Orientation •Dweck (1986), Maehr (1983), Nicholls (1984) • Mastery goals: developing competence through task mastery • Performance goals: developing competence relative to others
- 7. Achievement Goal Orientation •Elliot (1999), Elliot & Harackiewicz (1996), Pintrich (2000) • Extended to a 2 x 2 model – Definitions of competence: mastery & performance – Valences of competence: approach & avoid
- 8. Achievement Goal Orientation •Law, Elliot, & Murayama (2012) – Performance-approach goals: high effort, high persistence, high level of aspiration, high academic performance – Performance-avoidance goals: disorganized study strategies, high test anxiety, low academic performance, low intrinsic motivation – Perceived competence is a moderator
- 9. AGO 2 x2 Framework Approach Focus Avoidance Focus Master-Goal Orientation Focus on learning Focus on avoiding misunderstanding Performance-Goal Orientation Focus on outperforming others Focus on avoiding the appearance of incompetence, avoiding negative judgments
- 10. Honors Programs • Cosgrove(2004): mean GPA • Long & Lange (2002): conscientiousness, openness to experience, GPA, ACT • Rinn (2007): academic achievement and higher academic self-concept • Scager, Akkerman, Keesen, Mainhard, Pilot, & Wubbels (2012): desire to learn, drive to excel, creativity
- 11. Community College Context •Byrne (1988): review of literature • Long & Kurleander (2011): lower rates of degree completion and college credits earned • Olivas (1975) & Outcalt (1999): disproportion of underrepresented students
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- 13. Methodology: participants • • • • • Participants (n= 120) included community college students who participated in the institution’s honors program and who earned a cumulative GPA of 3.25 on at least 12 college credit hours by the end of summer semester 2012. Gender: 91 (75.8%) Female, 29 (24.2%) Male Status: 110 (91.7%) Continuing, 10 (8.3%) First-Time-InCollege (FTIC) Age: Range = 15-70, M = 29.27, SD = 11.00 GPA: M = 3.55, SD = .31
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- 15. Methodology: instrument • AchievementGoal Questionnaire – Revised or AGQ-R (Elliott & Murayama, 2008), a 12-item survey, each item consisting of a five-point summative response scale (Cronbach’s alphas: Mastery-approach, .84; Masteryavoidance, .88; Performanceapproach, .92; and Performanceavoidance, .94).
- 16. Methodology: procedure • • E-mail invitationsto participate in the study were sent to San Jacinto College students who had successfully completed at least 12 hours of college-level courses and had a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.25 and participated in the institution’s honors program. One respondent was excluded because he/she could not be identified. One eighteen-year-old, Hispanic female originally identified as “honors” and “continuing” was excluded based on 0.66 GPA, which would have made her ineligible for the honors program.
- 17. Results Note: CI =confidence interval; LL = lower limit, UL = upper limit.
- 19. Note: Multivariate f-ratioswere generated from Pillai’s trace.
- 20. Discussion • Competitive, performance-oriented environmentmay not affect AGO. • Non-significant findings align with the Witkow and Fuligni (2007) study with regard to the invariance of goal orientations across ethnicities • Contrary to Smith et al. (2002), the present study found no significant statistical difference between males and females in performance-avoidance goal orientation
- 21. Discussion • Limitations: – samplesize – community college population(generalizability). – Quasi-experimental.
- 22. Future research • AchievementGoal Orientation: – Conduct SEM and CFA; possible co-activation of performance valences; and additional dimensions. – Analysis of variance between honors and non-honors students – Relationship between AGO and academic achievement as measured by GPA – Regression Discontinuity Design between high-ability and typical/low-ability learners
- 23. References • • • • • • • • Byrne, J. P.(1998). Honors Programs in Community Colleges: A Review of Recent Issues and Literature. Cosgrove, J. R. (2004). The impact of honors programs on undergraduate academic performance, retention, and graduation. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 45-53. Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41, 1040-1048. Elliot, A. J., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: A mediational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 461– 475. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.461 Law, W., Elliot, A. J., & Murayama, K. (2012). Perceived competence moderates the relation between performance-approach and performance-avoid goals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 806-819. Long, E.C.J. & Lange S. (2002). An Exploratory Study: A Comparison of Honors & Non-Honors Students. The National Honors Report, 23 (1): 20-30. Long, T. L & Kurleander, M. (2011). Do community college provide a viable pathway to a baccalaureate degree? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31, 30-53. Maehr, M. L. (1983). On doing well in science: Why Johnny no longer excels, why Sarah never did. In S. Paris, G. Olson, & H. Stevenson (Eds.), Learning and motivation in the classroom (pp. 179–210). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- 24. References • • • • • Olivas, M. A.(1975). A Statistical Portrait of Honors Programs in Two-Year Colleges. (ED 221 257). Outcalt, C. L. (1999). The importance of community college honors programs. New Directions for Community Colleges, 108, 59-68. Pintrich, P. R. (2000). An achievement goal theory perspective on issues in motivation terminology, theory, and research. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 92–104. Rinn, A. N. (2007). Effects of programmatic selectivity on the academic achievement, Academic self-concepts, and aspirations of gifted college students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 51, 232-245. Scager, K., Akkerman, S. F., Keesen, F., Mainhard, M. T., Pilot, A., & Wubbels, T. (2012). Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives? Higher Education, 64, 19-39. DOI 10.1007/s10734-011-9478-z
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- 26. Contact information Scott R.Furtwengler University of Houston srfurtwengler@uh.edu
Editor's Notes
- #4 Research interests, background, preliminary research Mean differences: are non-honors students exhibiting self-handicapping behavior by not participating in an honors environment? For some community colleges, this is a question of accountability. If the students participating in honors are experiencing a higher degree of success on metrics of retention, achievement outcomes, persistence, and time-to-graduation, why aren’t all high ability students choosing to participate. If there are no measureable differences, why should we allocate resources to such a small population of students?
- #14 San Jacinto College is a community college with three campuses in east and south Houston. Total unduplicated enrollment for spring 2012 was 26,465: 57% female, 33% White, 10% African American, 40% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 1% Native American, 2% non-resident alien, 9% not reported, < 1% Native Hawaiian).
- #16 The structural validity of Elliott’s and Murayama’s revised instrument stands up to rigorous scrutiny. They found the four-factor structure to be a better fit to the data than other three- and two-factor structures, with each of the four factors exhibiting a high-degree of internal consistency and reliability
- #19 A two-way between subjects multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on four dependent variables: mastery-approach goal orientation, mastery-avoidance goal orientation, performance-approach goal orientation, and performance-avoidance goal orientation. The independent variables were gender (female, male) and ethnicity (White Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Black Non-Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan Native, International, & Unknown/Not Reported). The results of a statistically significant Box’s M test (p = .00) indicated a violation of the equality test of variance-covariance matrices of the dependent variables across levels of the dependent variables, therefore Pillai’s trace was used to assess multivariate effects. Using Pillai’s trace (see Table 3), the dependent variate was not significantly affected by the main effects of gender, Pillai’s trace = .007 F(4, 103) = .170, p > .05, partial η2 = .007, or ethnicity, Pillai’s trace = .235, F( 24, 424) = 1.104, p > .05, partial η2 = .059. The multivariate interaction of gender x ethnicity was not statistically significant, F < 1.0. Since no statistical difference was indicated by the multivariate analysis, a univariate analysis was not conducted.
- #20 A two-way between subjects multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on four dependent variables: mastery-approach goal orientation, mastery-avoidance goal orientation, performance-approach goal orientation, and performance-avoidance goal orientation. The independent variables were gender (female, male) and ethnicity (White Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Black Non-Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan Native, International, & Unknown/Not Reported). The results of a statistically significant Box’s M test (p = .00) indicated a violation of the equality test of variance-covariance matrices of the dependent variables across levels of the independent variables, therefore Pillai’s trace was used to assess multivariate effects. Using Pillai’s trace (see Table 3), the dependent variate was not significantly affected by the main effects of gender, Pillai’s trace = .007 F(4, 103) = .170, p > .05, partial η2 = .007, or ethnicity, Pillai’s trace = .235, F( 24, 424) = 1.104, p > .05, partial η2 = .059. The multivariate interaction of gender x ethnicity was not statistically significant, F < 1.0. Since no statistical difference was indicated by the multivariate analysis, a univariate analysis was not conducted.