Promoting the will and skill of students at academic risk: an evaluation of an instructional design geared to foster achievement, self-efficacy and motivation

Journal of Instructional Psychology, March, 2003 by Miriam Alfassi

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation Scale. (Hatter, 1981) This instrument is composed of 30 items that relate to motivation for classroom learning in five dimensions along an intrinsic to extrinsic continuum. The first three relate to intrinsic or extrinsic motivational orientation: (a) preference for challenge versus preference for easy work, (b) curiosity versus working to please the teacher and/or to get good grades (c) independent mastery (liking to figure things out on one's own) versus dependence on teacher. The remaining two subscales relate to cognitive-informational orientation: (d) independent judgement about what to do in the classroom versus reliance on teacher's opinion, and (e) internal criteria for evaluation of success or failure versus dependence on external criteria (i.e., grades, approval). The items were scored on a four-point scale with high scores reflecting an intrinsic motivation and low scores reflecting an extrinsic motivation.

In order to reduce the number of variables and simplify data presentation only the high-order factors motivational orientation (MTO) and cognitive informational orientation (CIO) were selected to be reported in this study. Coefficient alpha reliability estimates were .91 for the MTO scale and .84 for the CIO scale. Findings in support of the predictive, discriminant, and construct validity can be found in Harter (1981).

Results

The main objective of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of a learner centered structured academic program designed to promote competence and confidence when it was compared to traditional methods of remedial instruction. Data on four dependent variables were collected: achievement scores in language arts, math skills and on a standardized reading measure in addition to measures of academic self-efficacy and motivational orientation.

Achievement Measures

To test the significance of group differences in achievement scores on math and language skill tests a one-way MANOVA was conducted separately for 8th (n=30) and 9th (n=22) grade students across the two study groups. The analyses revealed significant differences among 8th grade students F(2,27) = 43.92, p < .001, and 9th grade students F(2,19) = 44.64, p < .001. The means, standard deviations and univariate ANOVA of both variables for each grade are presented in Table 1.

As can be seen in Table 1 differences were found among groups on all measures across grades. The experimental group differed significantly from the control group on all achievement measures, with the experimental group obtaining higher scores.

Standardized Reading Measure

An ANOVA was performed using a 2 (control group vs. experimental group) X 2 (8th grade vs. 9th grade) design in order to examine whether achievement scores on the standardized reading measure varied across groups and grades. The analysis revealed a significant difference in the mean scores on the standardized measure of reading comprehension between groups F(1,48) = 45.61, p < .001, with the experimental group obtaining higher scores (M = 52.32; SD = 4.29) than the control group (M = 41.87; SD = 6.59). However, the analysis did not reveal differences in the mean scores of the different grades F(1,48) = 1.12, p > .05, or a significant interaction effect of Group X Grade on the standardized comprehension test, F(1,48) = 1.43, p > .05.