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The impact of within-school autonomy on students’ goal orientations and engagement with mathematics

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Abstract

School autonomy has been identified as having an impact on a school’s performance, yet less has been reported about the effect this has on students’ goal orientations and engagement with mathematics. In a national study conducted in schools across Australia, measures of school autonomy were collected from teachers and school leaders, along with students’ perceptions of the mastery and performance goal orientations of their classrooms and personally using surveys. Schools were identified as having high or low levels of autonomy on the basis of school leaders’ responses. For the study discussed in this paper, a subset of 14 schools for which matched student and teacher data were available provided students’ responses to a variety of variables including goal orientations. The findings suggested students in high-autonomy schools were less likely to hold a personal performance approach and avoidance goals than their peers in low-autonomy schools. Fifty-five case studies conducted in 52 schools provided evidence of some of the practical aspects of these findings, which have implications for systems, schools and teachers.

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Notes

  1. Technical details on this instrument are available from OECD ( 2013, p. 284) which reports three indices, with reliabilities of 0.67, 0.65 and 0.63. In the current study, coding was undertaken using Rasch measurement guidelines (Bond and Fox 2007) to enable a single index of within-school autonomy.

  2. Watt (2004) reported a reliability of 0.94 for this subscale.

  3. Frenzel et al. (2012) used six items with a reported reliability of 0.87

  4. Reported reliabilities for mastery, performance approach and performance avoid were 0.86, 0.82 and 0.78, respectively.

  5. Midgley et al. (2000) used a 5-item subscale for mastery (α = 0.83) and 3 items for performance (α = 0.79).

  6. You et al. (2011) reported a reliability of 0.74 for this subscale.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and project team and do not necessarily reflect the view of the OCS. The involvement and contributions of A/Prof. Judy Anderson, Prof. Kim Beswick, A/Prof. Vince Geiger, Prof. Merrilyn Goos, Dr. Derek Hurrel, Dr. Christopher Hurst and Prof. Helen Watt are acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Charles Sturt University, Sydney, Australia

    Colin Carmichael

  2. University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia

    Tracey Muir & Rosemary Callingham

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  1. Colin Carmichael
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  2. Tracey Muir
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Correspondence to Tracey Muir.

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Carmichael, C., Muir, T. & Callingham, R. The impact of within-school autonomy on students’ goal orientations and engagement with mathematics. Math Ed Res J 29, 219–236 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-017-0200-z

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