What Predicts Quality of Learners’ Study Efforts? Implicit Beliefs and Interest Are Related to Mastery Goals but Not to Use of Effective Study Strategies

Veronica X Yan,Lisi Wang

doi:10.3389/feduc.2021.643421

Abstract

What goes into motivating students to take effective action? Ideally, students are not only motivated to invest time into their studying, but that they use their time in effective and productive ways. In the present study, we surveyed college undergraduates (N = 366) about how they engage in one of their college courses. Specifically, we explored how their motivation-related implicit beliefs (ease and difficulty mindsets, intelligence mindset;Dweck, 2000; Fisher and Oyserman, 2017) interact with perceived course interest and course importance to predict their achievement goal orientation for the course and the quality of their study strategies. We used a person-centered latent profiles analysis approach categorize meaningful profiles of implicit beliefs. Those who were likely to highly endorse motivation-increasing implicit beliefs and who found a course interesting were also more likely to hold mastery-approach goals; the relationship, however, was more complicated for performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals. Implicit beliefs profiles themselves did not directly relate to strategy use, but goal orientation did. In particular, mastery-approach goal orientation was uniquely related to all three of the effective study strategies subscales (e.g., elaborative, standard testing, generative testing). Mastery-avoidance was related to less use of elaborative strategies, and performance-goals were not related to any type strategy use. Perceived course importance was positively related to increased passive and elaborative strategies, but not the standard testing or generative testing strategies. We discuss implications for interventions.

Highlights

What goes into motivating students to take effective action? Research on motivation in the educational domain can be broadly categorized into the theories that relate to domain-general motivation-related implicit beliefs and those that relate to content-specific constructs
We found that those randomized to think of an interesting course (M = 78.27, SD = 22.72) rated their course as being significantly more interesting than those randomized to think of an uninteresting course (M = 39.04, SD = 30.77), Welch’s t(307.10) = 13.70, p < 0.001
Those randomized to think of an interesting course were more likely to rate their course as being more important (M = 67.55, SD = 25.69) than those randomized to think of an uninteresting course (M = 49.34, SD = 30.83), Welch’s t(312.60) = 5.92, p < 0.001

Summary

Introduction

What goes into motivating students to take effective action? Research on motivation in the educational domain can be broadly categorized into the theories that relate to domain-general motivation-related implicit beliefs (e.g., interpretations of ease and difficulty, growth mindset) and those that relate to content-specific constructs (e.g., value of a particular task or subject). The existing literature largely focuses on how implicit beliefs and value matter for academics because they affect the ways in which students engage. (students’ studying harder and for longer), both domain-general implicit beliefs and task-specific value affect the quality of study (students’ studying smarter, in deeper, more effective ways). We examine how these implicit beliefs and value affect students’ quality of study in two ways: as achievement goals, and as study strategies. Rather than examining how implicit beliefs and value separately relate to study engagement, we examine them together, finding interactions that may have important implications for intervention. We examine how implicit beliefs, value, and achievement goals relate to students’ use of study strategies, drawing on recent literature from cognitive psychology about different types of strategies

Methods

Results

Conclusion