Student’s motivational goal orientation in facing national exam in Indonesia

Abstract

The aim of this study is, first, to explore students’ personal achievement goal orientation in relation to National Exam in Indonesia. The second aim is to study the relation between students’ perception of teachers’ and parents’ goal orientation preferences with student’s personal achievement goal. According to Zimmerman (2011) goal orientation is the purpose or the reason of the learners’ achievement. This study used goal orientation theory as the theoretical framework. Goal orientation theory’s primary focus is how students think about their performance in their study. Many researchers have identified two types of goals that are mainly prominent in an achievement setting and they were referred by various names in the literature. However, in this study, these two goal orientations will be referred to as a mastery goal orientation and a performance goal orientation. Mastery goal orientation focuses on the development of knowledge, new skill, deep learning and improving their level of competence, thus is self-referential. Performance goals determines to demonstrate their competency to gain positive judgment, and in some cases, learners will feel successful by trying to outperform peers on academic tasks. This study was conducted using sample collected in a primary and secondary school in Indonesia. Pattern of Adaptive Learning Survey (PALS) by Carol Midgely et al., (2000) was used as data collection instrument in this study. There were three scale used; (1) Personal Achievement Goal Orientations, (2) Perceptions of Teacher’s Goals, and (3) Perceptions Of Parent’s Goals Perceptions. The questionnaires had been developed according to the trichotomies theoretical framework for students’ goals. The questionnaires used had also been modified to focus on engagement in specific task which is the National Exam. The results shows that there are; (a) non-significant differences of exam and non-exam group, for both personal mastery goal orientation and performance-approach goal orientation; (b) perception of teachers’ and parents’ mastery goal orientation do influence students’ personal mastery goal orientation due to moderate positive correlation result when it comes to students’ perception of the goal orientation delivered by parents and teachers in exam group students; (c) perception of teachers’ and parents’ mastery goal orientation have weak positive correlation with student’s personal mastery goal orientation in non-exam group students. On the other hand, for students’ personal performance-approach orientation, perception of teachers’ and parents’ performance-approach goal orientation do not have any correlation. The conclusions of this study highlight that there are many aspects influencing students’ personal achievement goal orientation that need to be considered. National Exam, in this context, was not giving much impact since there was no difference found in exam and non-exam group. Predictors of this result might be influenced of the International Curriculum adopted by the school or caused by the timing when the survey were distributed (post-exam). Parents’ and teachers’ contribution in endorsement of goal orientations are somehow important according to the correlation result. In the future study, more specific result might be seen from pre- and post-exam data to analyze whether the result differ from pre- and post-exam. In this case, longitudinal study will be suitable method to collect the data. Another suggested topic for further research is to investigate the relationship between teachers’ personal goal orientation in their teaching with students’ learning behavior.