Student–teacher relationships and achievement goal orientations: Examining student perceptions in an ethnically diverse sample

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.08.014Get rights and content

Highlights

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    We examine students' motivation and perceptions of the student–teacher relationship.

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    Perceived closeness is associated with a mastery goal orientation.

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    Perceived relational negativity is associated with performance goals.

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    Associations are similar for different ethnic groups.

Abstract

Among an ethnically diverse sample of 803 preadolescent students (ages 9–13 years), the present study examined the associations between students' perceptions of the student–teacher relationship and their achievement goal orientations. Multilevel analyses showed that students who perceived more closeness in the relationship with their teacher reported a stronger endorsement of mastery goals, particularly when they experienced more emotional problems.

This finding was independent of students' perceptions of peer acceptance. Likewise, perceived relational negativity (conflict and dependency) was associated with a stronger endorsement of performance goals (approach and avoidance). The results were similar for ethnic minority and ethnic majority students, and consistent with an attachment perspective which explains the motivational impact of the student–teacher relationship in terms of the security it provides.

Section snippets

An attachment perspective on motivation

The last two decades have seen a resurgence of research interest in the student–teacher relationship and much of this work has been conducted from an attachment perspective (see Davis (2003); Roorda et al. (2011)). This attachment perspective differs from other theoretical perspectives on the motivational impact of teachers – such as Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) or the Self-System Model of Motivation (Connell & Wellborn, 1991) – because it focuses on the mutual relationship

Achievement goals, attachment, and the student–teacher relationship

The achievement goal approach includes several conceptually similar frameworks which state that individuals can have qualitatively different goals in achievement situations (see for reviews, Eccles and Wigfield (2002); Elliot (1999); Wigfield and Cambria (2010)). Whereas some authors have examined these goals as situation-specific motivational states, most studies including the present research focus on people's general tendencies to endorse particular goals, i.e., their goal orientations (see

Ethnicity and peer acceptance

We examined the aforementioned relations in a multi-ethnic sample including ethnic Dutch, Turkish–Dutch, and Moroccan–Dutch students. Due to labor migration, Turks and Moroccans constitute the largest non-Western ethnic groups in the Netherlands. They are considered “typical” minority groups as they face relatively high levels of discrimination, and compared to ethnic Dutch students they do consistently less well at school on a variety of indicators (Gijsberts & Dagevos, 2010). For instance,

Overview of the current study

The goal of this study was to systematically examine, for the first time, the links between students' perceptions of different aspects of the student–teacher relationship and their achievement goal orientations. We did not formulate any hypothesis for students' performance-approach goals. However, we tested the expectation that the perception of relational closeness would be associated with a stronger endorsement of mastery goals, especially among students with more emotional problems, and the

Participants and procedure

Participants were 803 students (grades 4–6) of diverse ethnicities from 51 classrooms in 17 regular elementary schools in different parts of the Netherlands. These students had a mean age of 10.76 years (SD = 1.05) and 50.4% of them was female. According to their ethnic self-definition and the reported ethnicity of their parents 293 of these children were identified as Dutch. According to the same criteria, 287 children were identified as Turkish (n = 112) and Moroccan (n = 175). Of the remaining 223

Preliminary analyses

Prior to testing our hypotheses we conducted two sets of preliminary analyses. First, we conducted multiple-group CFA's in Mplus using the default maximum likelihood estimator to test whether the factor structures of the core measures in our study (the three relationship variables, the three goal orientations, emotional problems, and peer acceptance) were similar for the Turkish, Moroccan, and Dutch students. Thus, we examined whether the intercepts and loadings of the underlying factors were

Discussion

Despite the large literature on teachers' motivational impact on their students and the popularity of the achievement-goal framework, the question of how students' perceptions of the interpersonal student–teacher relationship contribute to their achievement goals has received little attention in the educational literature. The present study addressed this question by examining a multi-ethnic sample of preadolescent students in the Netherlands. Although its cross-sectional design prevents us

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by the Young Scholars' Research Grant received from the Jacobs Foundation by the first author.

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