The Interaction among Multiple Goals, Motivational Problems, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies

Biing-Lin Cherng　(Institute Education National Cheng Kung University)

Abstract

The research on self-regulated learning has supported the view that self-regulated learners adapted their strategy use to fit situational demands. Much of this research has examined this view without consideration of mediating role of learners’characters between contexts and regulated strategies. The current study of revised goal theory has addressed the role of multiple goals and linked them to students’self-regulated learning. Researchers of goal theory have no gave attention to how multiple goals mediate the interaction between learning contexts and self-regulated behaviors. This study was an attempt to integrate research of revised goal theory and self-regulated learning and to test interaction among multiple goals, motivational problems, and students’regulated strategies. The participants were 114 college students from two classes. The instruments employed in this study were Goal Orientation Scale and Regulated Strategies Open-ended Questionnaire. made by the author. Results showed that (a) the high-mastery/high-performance group reported the most strategies use and the low-mastery/low-performance group reported the least strategies use; (b) when faced with difficult material, subjects used more self-regulated learning strategies than faced with boring and no important course material; (c) the information-processing strategies was more frequently described by students; (d) there were significant three-way interaction among multiple goals, motivational problems, and students’use of regulated strategies. The high-mastery/high-performance group exhibited the most adaptive self-regulated learning pattern than the other groups. These students’reported use of regulated strategies varied across different situational demands. Students with high-mastery/low-performance goal orientation were more adaptive regulated behaviors in response to material described as difficult and boring, but these students were less adaptive self-regulated learning behaviors when faced with no important course material. When faced with no important and boring course material, the low-mastery/high-performance group could not reveal the adaptive self-regulated learning pattern. These students revealed more adaptive self-regulated behaviors only when faced with difficult course material. Finally, the low-mastery/low-performance students’use of strategies couldn’t vary across different motivational problems, these students are no on an adaptive pattern in self-regulated learning. Implications for theory, research, and teaching intervention are discussed.

Key Words

goal orientation self-regulated learning regulated strategy action control　　《Full text》