The Mastery Approach Goals in High School Students

Abstract

The Mastery Approach Goals have a positive effect in the academic and emotional development of the students. This type of topics has not been studied since its joint bonding with Meaning in Life and Self-Efficacy, therefore we analyzed the effect that Self-Efficacy and Meaning in Life has on Mastery Approach Goals in high school students. This was a transversal quantitative study. A sample of 331,431 students was used, obtained from the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, which was applied in 58 countries, out of which 170,739 (51.5%) were women and 160,692 (48.5%) were men. Also, we utilized the scales of EUDMO (Meaning in Life) and RESILENCE (Self-Efficacy), MASTGOAL e (Learning Goals) and WORKMAST (Motivation in Task Dominion) to evaluate the measuring models and the structural model. With the modeling for structural equations, we analyzed the theoretical model proposed and the research data, and the following results were obtained: SRMR = .022, RMSEA = .048 (90% IC: .047, .048), CFI = .971 y TLI = .963. With the Multigroup Modeling of Structural Equations we searched for evidence of configurational, metric and scale invariance of the structural model within the groups of the sample by gender and continent of residence. The Self-Efficacy and the Meaning in Life have a positive effect in the Mastery Approach Goals in students and this effect is invariant by gender and continent of residence of the participants. Relevant knowledge was obtained in the education field which justifies that teachers, educational psychologists, directors and educational public policy makers may include the work of Self-Efficacy and Meaning in Life in high school students to influence the development of achievement goals and thus improve the academic performance and well-being of high school students.

Key words: learning, motivation, goal orientation, adolescence, self-efficacy, learning goals.