The achievement goal orientation of disadvantaged physical sciences students from South Africa

Abstract

This study attempted to identify the achievement goal orientation of grade 12 Physical Sciences students from disadvantaged communities, and thereafter explain goal orientation by investigating its interaction with teacher, school and parent goal emphasis. The research adopted a mixed methods design involving first a quantitative survey of 300 students from 6 schools using an achievement goal questionnaire developed by Vedder-Weiss and Fortus (2010), followed by interviews with 12 students that served to explicate the trends revealed from the survey. A finding of this study was that disadvantaged Black students have a much stronger performance goal orientation in comparison to a mastery goal orientation. Students perceive the teacher, school and their parent to emphasize such a goal orientation. Despite disadvantaged students being motivated to perform well and achieve high marks in science, the dismal grade 12 results in the national Physical Sciences examination does suggest that a performance goal orientation of students may not be ideal.