Motivational Capabilities

compete successfully with younger students when it comes to learning and problem solving, given that they have similar access to other necessary resources.

Another resource that a learner may use to good effect on his/her studies is other people.

Seeking help from peers or teachers, when one has problems with one’s studies, is a strategy based on social interaction. In help seeking, the learner takes part in cooperative learning situations in which he/she has to engage in discussions and explain and specify his/her own viewpoints. Thus, a learner needs to know when the support of others is required and how it can be obtained (Ruohotie, 2002a: 45). In addition, Ruohotie (ibid.) notes that help seeking is related to learning motivation and that those learners who think that they do not need help even with difficult material usually have trouble controlling and managing their other resources as well.

Pintrich and McKeachie (2000) bring up another cognitive resource managing strategy that they call effort management. They propose that this is one of the most important learning strategies, since it is the nexus between motivation and cognition. As such, effort management can be seen as a generic term that covers some of the previously mentioned cognitive resource management strategies, since, in order to manage one’s efforts, a learner must manage his/her mental energy and attention level. It should be noted that learners are usually unable to manage or control some of their cognitive resources, such as their processing speed and the capacity of their consciousness, unless their cognitive resources have been weakened by something that they may have some control over, such as exhaustion or intoxicants.

Pintrich’s (2000) division, the author sees goal-orientation as four different categories of goal orientations and approach and avoidance states. In approach mastery orientation, the learner is interested in mastering, learning and understanding a task, as well as self- improvement. In avoidance mastery state, the learner avoids misunderstanding and not learning a task because of his/her own self-set standards of achievement and striving for perfection. On the other hand, individuals with approach performance orientation focus on besting others and receiving the highest grades, and those with avoidance performance orientation try to avoid being inferior to others, mostly by avoiding tasks at which they do not excel. (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2000: 196-202.)

Although it is not possible to study learners’ approach and avoidance states in the scope of the present study, it is believed that the above-described interplay between various goal- orientations greatly diversifies any group of students and thus poses challenges for the structuring and designing of the learning materials and assignments used in teaching and learning contexts. It is also recognised that while the learners’ variable goal orientations affect their own learning, they will also affect their behaviour and conduct in group learning environments, especially when the learning tasks call for collaboration and cooperation between learners.

b) Efficacy Beliefs

As was discussed in section 3.3.2, social cognitive theorists stress the importance of the learners’ perceptions of self-efficacy, their beliefs in their own abilities or possibilities, and their decision to use certain learning strategies. This means that they will not blindly use a new learning strategy if they feel that it is alien to their normal methods. (Zimmerman 2001: 7). Schunk (2001) reports that students’ self-efficacy beliefs influenced their choice of tasks, their persistence at the task, as well as their effort and eventual achievement. The relationship between the learner and the task is reciprocal in nature, which means that while the learner’s self-efficacy beliefs affect the choice of the task, the progress that they make on the task also affects their self-efficacy beliefs. Thus, if the learner notices that he/she is doing well on a task, their self-efficacy beliefs grow stronger and he/she is inclined to perform even better.

It was also noted in section 3.3.2, that students who focus on their performance, rather than their own development, tend to infer their level of intelligence from it. In order to avoid negative evaluation that might endanger their self-efficacy and self-worth beliefs, they may avoid challenging tasks. They are also likely to blame their own poor skills and abilities when they fail at a task.

Salili et al. (2001) note that, in their research, students’ self-efficacy beliefs correlated positively with academic performance in three groups of students from different cultures.

Therefore, it seems that self-efficacy beliefs, although they are not omnipotent and research has not yet agreed on their true effect, can have predictive value at least in situations where different groups working on similar tasks are compared with each other.

However, it must be remembered that if the learner is not an expert in, or at least knowledgeable about, the field of a particular task, his/her self-efficacy statements are more likely to go wrong.

c) Attributions

Individuals rate and attribute goals and results differently with respect to their importance to themselves, and they give different meanings to the tasks and their outcomes (e.g.

Molden & Dweck, 2000; Deci & Ryan, 1987; Deci & Ryan, 1991). Goals are basically constructions built upon meanings that individuals give to their experiences. Individuals who value good grades will study harder than those who see education as having no importance in their life. People who have different personal goals employ different strategies and give different meanings to situations (MacCallum, 2001: 164). Molden and Dweck (ibid.) argue that learners, who, for example, consider a person’s intelligence to be fixed, may be more likely to choose performance goals than learning goals, since they are interested in gauging their intelligence. On the other hand, those who believe in the malleability of skills and abilities may be more willing to choose tasks that involve, or are solely about, learning, because they are interested in developing themselves, rather than merely gauging their abilities or comparing themselves to others. A practical example involving sports hobbyists would be a badminton player with a performance orientation, who values victory and gets upset about losing a game, because he/she believes that wins are a measure of one’s stable abilities, versus another player who has chosen a mastery goal, and sees lost games as just another learning experience and does not draw permanent

conclusions about his/her skills on the basis of won and lost games. An activity may also be seen as incidental to one’s long-term goals. An athlete engaged in playing badminton may not attach much importance to the games won and lost simply because the ultimate goal that he/she is striving for is improved health, not better skills at badminton. Similarly, a learner may engage in study programmes out of pure interest that does not place value on the grades received. The learner may be satisfied with the mere glimpse of another world that the study programme offers, without feeling the need to study it in depth. Nowadays, however, because information is readily available online, such learners probably find what information they want online and do not enter into study programmes (see also the concept of situational interest, below).

To summarise, Molden and Dweck (ibid.) contend that the interpretations that individuals make of the qualities that various tasks are reveal about them affect their approach to those tasks. If they believe the qualities involved to be unchanging, they are more likely to choose performance goals than mastery goals, because the latter may prove detrimental to their sense of self-worth. On the other hand, an individual, who considers the purpose of even a temporary performance goal (receiving a high grade in a test) to be a chance to develop oneself in the long run, will perceive primarily positive consequences and thus show high levels of intrinsic motivation for such tasks (see also Butler, 2000: 164-165).

As a term, attributions refer to the way learners react to success or failure. Some learners, possibly extrinsically goal orientated, may believe that their failure in a task was caused by limitations in their ability. This will cause them to believe less in their skills and abilities and possibly avoid similar tasks in the future. When they have to engage in a task with which they do not believe that they can be successful, they may perform below their real ability level. On the other hand, someone intrinsically goal oriented, and skilful in self- regulation, will attribute failure to a poor learning strategy or method, or insufficient practice. They will therefore understand that they could have achieved better results, and may do so in future, if they only practice more or use a different strategy. Thus, they will not see failure as something that cannot be overcome, something resulting from a lack in themselves, but something that can be corrected with enough effort (see Ruohotie, 2002a).

Another factor that has a connection with mastery and performance goals in addition to attributions, is interest. Hidi (2000) differentiates between two types of interest: situational

and individual. In brief, a situational interest is one that is triggered in a specific situation by particular conditions or objects that arouse attention. Hidi (ibid.) notes that this initial affective reaction may be either positive or negative in tone and it may or may not last. She explains (drawing on research by Mitchell, 1993) that interest therefore has two distinct stages, one on which the interest is triggered and another on which the interest is potentially maintained. Renninger (2000) notes that situational interest relates to curiosity and sense of enjoyment, but that it gives no indication of the individual’s knowledge of the topic or interest. Furthermore, situational interest can, in the long run, be the first stage of a long term individual interest through increased knowledge, value and positive feelings.

Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) argue that only when situational interest is maintained, should it be seen as behaviour that is intrinsically motivated. Thus, only lasting situational interest may lead to mastery goals. Individual interest, on the other hand, is described as a continuing tendency to attend to specific activities and stimuli (Renninger, 2000; Hidi, 2000). Thus, over time, an individual with such an interest gathers extensive knowledge and positive feelings, and comes to value the objects of their interest (Hidi, ibid.). Hidi (ibid.) explains the relationship, and the elusive difference, between individual interest and intrinsic motivation leading to mastery goals thusly: “When one is describing specific actions, intrinsic motivation is one of the two general classes . . . and interest is one of a set of motives that may result in intrinsically motivated behaviour . . . [s]imilarly, when one is dealing with motivational orientations, individual interest can be viewed as a specific case of intrinsic motivation” (2000:316).