The impact of classroom practices on student's learning of English

Luo, W., Hogan, D., & Paris, S. G. (2011). Predicting Singapore students’ achievement goals in their English study: Self-construal and classroom goal structure. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(5), 526-535.

Background

Prior research has shown that the type of goals students adopt affect whether they focus on subject learning or on competing with their fellow students or whether they avoid both these possibilities.

Aims

The present study examined classroom practices in Singapore secondary schools and how these practices (classroom goal structure and self-construal, i.e., whether students defined themselves independently or interdependently in relation to others) affected students’ learning of English in terms of their achievement goal orientations.

Sample

There were 1,496 students from 30 schools and 104 classes who participated in the present study.

Method

The following were measured in a survey administered to the students:

a. personal achievement;

b. classroom goal structure;

c. self-construal (valuing personal uniqueness and independence); and

d. English self-concept.

The authors analysed the power of classroom goal structure and self-construal in predicting the types of personal achievement goals.

Findings

Classrooms with a mastery goal structure promoted the adoption of a mastery approach and avoidance goals, while classrooms with a performance focus fostered the adoption of a performance approach and avoidance goals. That is, students in classrooms that focused on mastering what was to be learnt tended to concentrate on learning the content and were concerned about failing to learn well. In contrast, students in classrooms that focused on students competing with each other tended to concentrate on whether they performed better than their classmates and wanted to avoid appearing incompetent in front of their classmates and teachers.

Students who defined themselves in relation to others tended to focus on learning content well and were afraid of not mastering the content, while students who defined themselves as separate from others focused on performing better than their peers and on avoiding unfavourable judgments on their ability. Students who avoided unfavourable judgments on their ability also had relatively low English self-concept.

Implications

The classroom goal structure, transmitted by classroom instructional practices, does seem to predict students’ achievement goals. Therefore, to help students have both mastery and performance achievement goals, teachers might have to adopt a combination of approaches, a mastery goal structure promoting a learning environment that signals to students that learning is important and that they can be successful if they work hard, and a performance goal structure conveying to students that being successful is demonstrating higher ability than others and getting extrinsic rewards for performance.

Original article retrieved from ScienceDirect.