The role of motivational characteristics in Taiwanese sixth graders` avoidance of help seeking in the classroom

Abstract

This study explored how Taiwanese upper‐elementary‐school students’ motivational characteristics were related to their decisions regarding avoidance of help seeking in the classroom context. Two hundred and ninety‐eight sixth‐grade students completed a self‐report survey assessing their attitudes and behaviors related to help avoidance, achievement goal orientations, perceptions of the classroom goal structure, implicit theories of intelligence, and affective experiences in school. Students’ overall grades from fifth grade were collected from their school records. Results suggested that children’s mastery‐focused motivation, such as perceptions of a mastery goal structure, incremental theory of intelligence, and mastery goal orientations, were negatively associated with their attitudes toward avoidance of help seeking. In terms of help‐avoidance behaviors, in addition to the negative relations of mastery‐focused motivational components to this outcome variable, I found that the entity theory of intelligence and performance‐avoidance goal orientation positively predicted students’ help‐avoidance behaviors. The significant interaction between mastery classroom goal structure and mastery goal orientation on students’ attitudes toward help avoidance indicated that the negative association between mastery goal orientation and reported attitudes toward help avoidance was stronger among students who scored higher on the mastery classroom goal structure scale. With regard to the documented profiles of students holding different views of intelligence, in general, incremental theorists displayed the most adaptive help‐seeking tendencies. Implications for education and future research are discussed.