ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1639938
This article is part of the Research TopicCulture and Emotion in Educational Dynamics - Volume IVView all 11 articles
Culture, Goal Orientation and Achievement of Vocational Students
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Mathematical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- 2Shanghai Key Laboratory of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Practice, Shanghai, China
- 3Chengdu Academy of Education Sciences, Chengdu, China
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This study explored the relationship between cultural values, goal orientation, and mathematics achievement in mainland China. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze data collected from 1,004 first-year students of four majors in higher vocational colleges. This study adopted a four-dimensional goal orientation, including achievement (i.e., students’ mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) and society (i.e., family instrumental support goal orientation, and family emotional support goal orientation) to describe Chinese students’ motivation. The results indicated that mathematics achievement was positively related to mastery goal orientations and negatively related to the performance-avoidance goal orientation. Family recognition through achievement was found to positively predict the students’ mastery, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, while conformity to norms was negatively linked to performance-approach orientations. Collectivism, on the other hand, was positively related to adopting the family support goal orientation and to mastery goal orientations, performance-approach. Nevertheless, emotional self-control was positively associated with students’ mastery. Humility was positively related to performance-approach orientations, family instrumental support goal orientation and family emotional support goal orientation. It also had a direct positive predictive effect on mathematics achievement. The results of the bootstrap analyses further confirmed the mediating role of goal orientation in the relationship between cultural values and mathematics achievement: there were positive indirect paths through the mastery orientations, and negative indirect paths through the performance-avoidance goal orientation. Potential explanations for the findings are discussed.
Keywords: achievement goal orientation, cultural values, mathematics achievement, Mathematics motivation, Social goal orientation, Vocational college students
Received: 03 Jun 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Lei, Tan and Xiong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Qi Tan, School of Mathematical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
Bin Xiong, School of Mathematical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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