Student’s cognitive and emotional health and own versus mother’s achievement goal orientation

Abstract

Background. When student’s activity is motivated by mastery-oriented goals they have relatively high levels of self-esteem and progress while avoidance-oriented purposes induce maladaptive patterns. Our study adds the mother’s motivations concerning own children’s academic achievement and their implications in the student’s emotional and cognitive health. Methods. Questionnaires were distributed to 385 students (195 boys and 190 girls) from three school stages, 4, 8 and respectively 12, and their mothers. Achievement goals have been evaluated both in mothers and child; data for the satisfaction with student’s life, depressive symptoms and learning self-efficacy have been collected from students and the parental self-efficacy, from mothers. Analysis included correlations, t tests, and regressions, structural equation modeling based on the bootstrapping technique. Findings: The satisfaction with student’s life, learning self-efficacy and student’s depressive symptoms are different from one stage to another. Parental self-efficacy of mother does negatively correlate with children depression and it does mediate the relations between own children’s academic mastery goals and the intensity of his depressive symptoms. Mother’s performance oriented goals and failure avoidance goals were both correlated with depressive symptoms of the children. Mastery oriented student’s goals, relationship-oriented and performance-oriented are positive predictors of the satisfaction with student’s life while the avoidance goals are not correlated at all. Discussions: Parameters like satisfaction with student’s life, depressive symptoms and learning self-efficacy are stage specific and are predicted not only by the student’s purposes in the academic activity but also by mother’s goals concerning her children’s academic development and by her parental self-efficacy.