Abstract
It is well recognized the importance of preschool children understanding of a product goal or a process goal in a school activity and in which way the kind of the goal could affect children’s performance in this activity. As known, product goals determine the outcome of learning and lead students’ attention to the outcome rather than to the strategy or method that can lead to the result. Instead, the process goal refers to methods and strategies that lead students learn handling a specific task. Herein, 30 preschool children, at a mean age of 5 ½ years, participated in two different games, twice each with different goal each time (product goal/process goal). The results showed that preschool children exhibited better performance in both games when the goal was of product type. Moreover, in the case of a process goal, it was observed that children encouraged their classmate who played the game, while in case of a product goal they did not encourage their classmate, but they only counted his successful efforts. The results show that children understand the difference between process goal and product goal, enhancing their performance in case of product goals aiming to win. Nevertheless, previous studies which contacted in older children, under competitive learning environment where the goal of an activity emphasize to the outcome, showed that children brake their efforts, when they feel that they cannot win. According the obtained results, preschool teachers should avoid the product goals and emphasize to the process goals.
Highlights
In education framework, the goal of an activity defines the purpose of this activity and is distinguished between product and process goals (Schunk & Swartz, 1993; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1996)
The results showed that students who adopted process goals acquired new motor skills more successfully than students who adopted product goals
The results of this study showed that preschool children had better performance in both games when the goal of the game was product than when the goal was process
Summary
The goal of an activity defines the purpose of this activity and is distinguished between product and process goals (Schunk & Swartz, 1993; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1996). Process goals refer to the methods and strategies that can help students learn to handle a specific task. Studies showed that process goals positively correlated with achievement outcomes and high motivation in educational environments. The results showed that students showed higher motivation and achievement outcomes when they used the learning goal in order to solve the problems than they used the performance goal. Similar results were showed by Zimmerman and Kitsantas (1996), they taught the children a new motor skill of how to throw darts at a target, using product and process goals. Study which conducted with older students (e.g. junior high school students) showed that competition leads to less motivation for learning in educational settings and increasing anxiety (Papaioannou & Kouli, 1999)
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