Seegers, G., Van Putten, C. M., Vermeer, H. J. (2004). Effects of Causal Attributions Following Mathematics Tasks on Student Cognitions About a Subsequent Task. The Journal of Experimental Education, 72(4), 307-328.
Choice of Study
Research on motivation and learning has emphasized the role of students' goal orientations. Goal orientation creates a framework for how students experience learning tasks in achievement settings and give meaning to learning opportunities. Contrasting goal orientations have been proposed (Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Ames, 1992; Ames & Archer, 1988; Nicholls, 1984). Task orientation motivates students to develop competence through expanding one's abilities by mastering challenging tasks. Ego oriented students, on the other hand, focus on demonstrating mental ability to others to increase self worth.
Seegers & Boekaerts (1993) and Skaalvik (1997) have argued that the dichotomy between task and ego orientation is not enough to explain the complexity of the concept of goal orientation. Seegers and Boekaerts (1993) found a parallel contrast between task orientation and error frustration. Error frustration occurs when task-oriented students, who display an interest in learning a task, are confronted with a disappointing task outcome. Students who agree that the task domain is relevant and interesting experience disappointment and frustration when confronted with a negative outcome. Frustration is focused on the protection of self worth and confirmation of ability by investing in additional effort whereas self-defeating ego orientation leads to avoiding public evaluation by diminishing effort investment and denial of task relevance.
Problem
Most studies have considered goal orientation as consistent across domains. Causal attributions of a mathematics task outcome contribute to how students adapt to a similar task on a subsequent, there is evidence that motivational orientations are sufficiently distinct across learning domains (Bong, 2001). This study restricted itself to the mathematics domain with goal orientation considered a domain-specific variable. In addition to goal orientation, students' ability beliefs influence their attitude when confronted with learning tasks and this study included students' self-concept of mathematics ability. The authors investigated how causal attributions of a mathematics task outcome contribute to how students adapt to a similar task.
Methods
The authors included 27 schools and collected data on 541 sixth-graders for the study. First, students answered questions on two questionnaires. A goal orientation questionnaire had 21 statements about experiences and behavior in mathematics classes (e.g. "I feel satisfied when I have learned something in mathematics that makes sense to me") and students answered on a 4-point Likert scale from 'Never' to 'Always.' The second questionnaire focused on self-concept of mathematics ability (" How good are you at...") with students responding on a 5-point scale from "very good" to "not good at all."
The students were asked to rate perceived task outcome on a scale from 1 (very poor) to 4 (very good) as well as being given a number of causes to choose from to explain task outcome. They were also asked to rate how relevant each of the attributions were to the task outcome.
Results
There was a high correlation between self-concept of mathematics ability and subjective competence, moderate correlations between self concept of mathematics ability and task performance, task attraction, and willingness to invest effort.
The authors felt the model that included task performance plus appraisals adequately explained the effects that students will attribute a positive outcome to ability. Willingness to invest effort and perceived attractiveness of the task had a positive effect on the likelihood that students will ascribe a positive outcome to invested effort. (p. 320). There was also a correlation with subjective competence: as student's subjective competence rose, the greater the likelihood that students disagreed that lack of personal ability would explain a poor outcome.
Discussion
When confronted with actual learning tasks, students draw on a number of resources to determine the balance between estimated competence for the task and their willingness to invest effort. The authors looked at what variables have an effect on students explaining positive or negative task outcomes and how do students look at future tasks given past performance. When students consider task outcome a success, there is a higher likelihood that the student will ascribe this outcome to personal ability. They will look to future tasks with the same or slightly higher subjective competence.
When students who score high on subjective competence consider a task outcome as a failure, they do not accept lack of ability as the answer. Rather they ascibe the outcome as a lack of effort, preserving self-image and ego. As a corollary to this, students with high self-concept, when confronted with a task failure, tended to reduce the task relevance - a response that also protected self-worth. It is only when a student cannot ascribe failure to lack of effort does self-image begin to change and subjective competence begins to change in regards to future tasks.
Conclusion
Students who are confronted with a learning task use resources to adapt to the task, how to estimate their chance of success, and how much effort they will invest in the task. The authors showed that former learning experiences have an effect on perceived competence and amount of effort to invest in a future task. They showed ego protecting behaviors by students when confronted with failure of tasks, including lack of effort or reduced task relevance. Causal attributions have an effect on subsequent tasks.
9 comments:
Thanks, Steve.
I was struck by the author's choice of the term "ego-oriented." I don't remember encountering this earlier, but I wonder what other factors go into making a student ego-oriented. From what you have said, to be task-oriented, the students need to be in a positive state with respect to their self-worth and ability.
The idea of promoting self-worth (read esteem) is pretty well-established with social promotion and other practices in schools (such as excessive praise), but we already know from class that these practices damage belief about personal ability.
Perhaps teachers can use feedback to communicate the notion of insufficient or misdirected effort with ego-orientation students when they experience error frustration? Maybe this practice could even help to re-orient these students to becoming task oriented?
Shannon,
Just like you, I, too, was interested in the ego-oriented aspect of this review. It seems similar to that of the ego-social hypothesis in Mark's review in Self-Regulation.
I had not previously thought about ego as part of motivation or the level of motivation one has.
To feel competent and able relates to one's level of esteem and that then hopefully further helps motivate someone to continue working and successfully achieving the task at hand.
Sounds interesting and not surprising. I should think ego-protection becomes a problem more than not... like we see with our students who simply won't try try as they anticipate failure.
I agree Amy, I see students protect their egos a lot. It seems to be related to to the achievement theory in which students don't even try unless they know they will succeed. It's unfortunate for the students because as a teacher I appreciate it when my students who may not be academically capable to achieve something put forth the most effort. Thanks for the review Stephen.
Like Shannon and the others, I, too, was struck by the ego oriented person. Bandura never referred to such a concept. But he did describe the person with high self-efficacy in the same way as the task oriented person in this article.
At the same time, he described the person with low domain specific self-efficacy in the identical terms used in this article for the ego driven person. Nonetheless, low self-efficacy is hard to relate to ego drive. Facing negative outcomes, both save face by reducing effort and denying worth, like "sour grapes" (Aesop, 600 BC).
I also thought about ego-protecting behaviors and wondered how we can scaffold students to move from protecting themselves to acting more efficaciously.
Steve, it seems to me that the researchers asked the sixth graders to do a lot of self-reflecting during the data gathering! Was there any discussion about preparing them for this task? Was self-reflection ability controlled for somehow? And what about the impact of "better" or "worse" teachers? Some kids use their teacher's perceptions of them as a mirror for their emerging ability to self-reflect.
Let me respond to a number of you that commented on the term 'ego orientation.' The authors mention contrasting goal orientations such as learning versus performance orientation (Dweck & Elliott, 1983) and mastery versus performance goals (Ames & Archer, 1988), as well as task versus ego orientation (Nicholls, 1984). In the words of the authors, Nicholls (1984) states "task orientation motivates students to develop competence through expanding one's abilities by mastering challenging learning tasks....On the other hand, ego-oriented students focus on demonstrating mental ability to others to increase self-worth. Students demonstrate their competence by seeking favorable judgments and by avoiding negative outcomes."
Many theories overlap and I don't think any one theory fully captures the complexity of motivation in individuals. But the concept of ego-orientation has some truth to it and, I believe, is a facet of what motivates students.
Steve
Dionne-
Good question!
The students were asked to complete two questionnaires before taking the two math tests. Then the students were asked to complete an additional questionnaire (actually, the second half of one given before the testing) asking them how they thought they did on the test questions. The authors don't mention any preparation given to the students, though they do talk about the validity and reliability of the questionnaires.
The 'reflection' was asking students to rate questions such as "I did well on this task because I am good at this type of task." Seems that this kind of question would work for the students.
Steve
Dionne-
There will always be 'good' and 'bad' teachers and you are correct in asking about their influence in the study. Since there were 27 schools in the study, it may be reasonable to assume that the sample had both kinds of teachers and that the results would remain valid. The authors do indicate in the very last paragraph of this 23-page study that "teachers should be aware of the relevance of motivational beliefs," which is about as close as the authors get to acknowledging that differences exist - though this comment was related to student differences and not teachers.
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