Abbreviated Assessment Tool of Learned Helplessness and Mastery Orientation: The Student Behavior Checklist—Brief

Measurement limitations have hindered research on learned helplessness (LH) and mastery orientation (MO) in the classroom. We reduced the 24-item Student Behavior Checklist to a 6-item scale and tested the abbreviated measure for evidence of reliability and validity in a sample of 5th and 6th graders ( N = 299). We then replicated findings in an independent sample of middle school students ( N = 116). Results demonstrated strong support for construct validity of the Student Behavior Checklist-Brief (SBC-B), including a hierarchical two-factor structure indicating the distinctness of LH and MO and an overarching construct, which we refer to as learning approach. Results also demonstrated consistent evidence supporting criterion and convergent/discriminant validity, internal consistency reliability, and temporal stability. The SBC-B offers a psychometrically sound teacher-report measure of LH and MO.

Are growth mindset, mastery orientation, and grit promising for promoting achievement in the Global South? Psychometric evaluations among Indonesian adolescents

We examined the measurement characteristics and cross-cultural measurement invariance of growth mindset, mastery orientation, and grit among Indonesian (N=55,964) and US (N =440) adolescents. We found support for strong invariance across males and females for all factors in both contexts. Indonesian females reported higher growth mindset and mastery orientation latent means than Indonesian males. We found mixed evidence for cross-cultural measurement invariance using two approaches. A Bayesian approach supported measurement invariance for mastery orientation and grit, whereas each factor achieved only configural or weak invariance using subsampling approach based in frequentist estimation. Notably, higher levels of each construct were associated with higher grades in Indonesia and in the US. We conclude that while some measurement issues warrant future investigation, growth mindset, mastery orientation, and grit conceptually translate to the Indonesian context and are promising targets for academic achievement interventions for Indonesian youth and perhaps youth in the broader Global South.

A Serial Mediation Approach to Goal Orientations, Learning Strategies and Achievement Outcomes on a Computer-Mediated English Program

Computer-mediated learning initiatives have recently increased due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Implications are thus created for self-regulation, learning and achievement as computer-mediated learners face unique motivational and metacognitive demands. The current research uses a serial mediation approach to test the effect of goal orientations and the mediatory role of learning strategies on achievement among 195 Japanese university students on a 24-month computer-mediated English program. The tested model shows a good fit to the data and accounts for 28.5% of the achievement variance. Direct effects are observed between a performance-approach orientation and achievement. Mediation effects are also observed between a performance-approach orientation and achievement via a strategic approach to learning. In contrast, the effect of a mastery orientation on achievement is mediated via a strategic approach to learning. A mediated serial effect is also observed between a mastery orientation and achievement via a deep and strategic approach to learning. The challenges facing teachers and students of computer-mediated learning solutions in English as a foreign language (EFL) education and the importance of providing an informed experience that facilitates, supports and rewards adaptive motivations and approaches to learning are discussed.

Changes to students’ motivation to learn science

Studies that investigated the relations between the environment and students’ motivation to engage with science have typically looked at the state of students’ motivation at a given time and its relations with the environment. This study took a different perspective; it looked at the changes to students’ motivation to engage with science that occurred over a school year and investigated what drove these changes. According to goal orientation theory, students typically shift their personal goal orientations towards their perceptions of the goal emphases of their environment. For example, if students perceive their science teachers as highly emphasizing mastery orientation, they are likely to become more mastery oriented towards science with time. However, different environmental influences, such as parents, peer, teachers, and general school culture, push and pull the students in different directions. Using survey data gathered from Israeli adolescents that came from low SES backgrounds, we demonstrated that any shift in students’ mastery orientation towards science was not related to their perceptions of the environmental emphases, but rather to the differences they perceived between the environment and themselves. In addition, we identified which environmental influences were stronger predictors of shifts in students’ mastery orientation towards science. These results help to clarify the influence of the environment on students’ motivation to engage with science, can help understand why interventions may sometimes lead to counter-intuitive results, and can provide the basis for a model that may be useful for predicting how students’ motivation for science may change over a school year.

Mindset, Motivation, and Teaching Practice: Psychology Applied to Understanding Teaching and Learning in STEM Disciplines

This article reports a study of the relationships among instructor mindset, attitudes about motivation (mastery orientation), and effective teaching practices. Mastery orientation mediates the relationship between mindset and teaching behavior, providing support for Dweck’s model of implicit theories of personality and motivation.