Students’ mastery goal orientation, academic achievement and education-to-employment transition attitudes. Evidence from 30 countries

Abstract

The study aims to seek an answer to the question of whether it is justified to introduce the construct of mastery goal orientation into the discussion of soft skills standards in education in terms of its relevance to students’ success in school and to youths’ education-to-work transitions, thereby becoming a prerequisite for social inequalities mitigation. Methods: The analysis is done in two stages. In the first stage multilevel binary regressions with PISA 2018 microdata in 30 countries are applied to model the relationship between the predictors (mastery goal orientation, social status, academic achievement, self-efficacy and attitudes towards school and learning) and the outcome variables education-to-employment transition attitudes. In the second stage, descriptive comparative analysis for 19 countries is done to explore the relation between academic achievement, mastery goal and actual education-to-employment transition regimes. Results: Modelling confirms that, at the individual level, lower social background predicts shorter school-to-work transition attitudes, as well as transition avoidance attitudes, while higher social status is associated with attitudes towards longer career transition. Mastery goal orientation as a disposition contributes to attitudes toward extended education-to-employment transitions that go through obtaining a higher degree, thus moderating the impact of social status on attitudes toward transition. Furthermore, mastery goal orientation is found to inhibit the emergence of attitudes toward short transition and transition avoidance. Mastery goal orientation has the strongest associations compared to the other predictors in the models with the transition attitudes. The observations provide reasons at least to introduce the mastery goal orientation into the discussion about standards in education. Further research is needed to validate how attitudes toward transitions translate into actual transition regimes and what is the role of mastery goal orientation along with social status and educational attainment in this process.