The Effectiveness of Cognitive Motivational Multidimensional Intervention on Academic Self-Efficiency and Mastery Goal Orientation of Elementary School Students

Background & Aims: There are many factors that lead to progress in the academic environment. Factors such as motivational and environmental characteristics are important, but it is widely assumed that motivation is one of the main elements of progress in the educational environment. One of the important topics in the field of motivation is goal orientation. The theory of goal orientation mainly examines why people choose a specific goal, how they approach the desired goal and engage with the task related to it. One of the dimensions of goal orientation that has been examined in this research is mastery goal orientation, which has a direct relationship with people's learning and performance. Mastery goal orientation is known as a person's unconscious approach to a learning task. In general, the mastery goal orientation directs the academic behavior and is able to explain the relationship between the student's beliefs about academic success and being involved and continuing to complete a task, which has an effective role in the academic progress of students. Self-efficacy is another important factor that is of interest to researchers and administrators in the field of education. Bandura investigated the effects of self-efficacy on academic performance and named this construct as academic self-efficacy. He believes that self-efficacy beliefs play a role in academic success more than ability, knowledge and previous success. Academic self-efficacy emphasizes students' beliefs about their ability to succeed in academic subjects, curricular areas, and self-regulation in learning and study activities. Cognitive-motivational intervention is the process of monitoring, reviewing and directing behavior that reduces aimlessness and inconsistency between motivation and effort and leads a person on the path of effort and achieving efficiency. Studies have shown that teaching self-regulation components in Martin's theory can; affect the level of students' motivation, for example, sustainability in Martin's approach is one of the factors that is known as an effective factor and can lead to more self-efficacy and increase academic motivation in students. Persistence means that a person continues in his work despite the difficulty of the work and the challenges that exist. Due to the fact that training motivated, purposeful and efficient learners is one of the requirements for achieving academic success and the concept of motivation has always been the focus of researchers and education specialists. Therefore, cognitive motivational multidimensional intervention can be useful in the field of education. Considering the importance of this approach, the research question is: Is cognitive motivational multidimensional intervention effective on students' academic self-efficacy and mastery goal orientation? Methods: The present study was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up design with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of the research was all the fifth-grade students of Nahavand primary school, a sample of 30 people (15 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group) was selected through cluster sampling. The research tools included the academic self-efficacy questionnaires of Zajakova et al. (2005) and the goal orientation of Midgley et al. (1998). After the pre-test, the experimental group was trained in cognitive motivational intervention during 9 sessions of 45 minutes, and the control group did not receive any intervention. After the completion of the experimental intervention, the post-test and after one month, the follow-up test was performed. To analyze the data, Mixed analysis of variance was used in SPSS-23 software. Results: The results showed that cognitive motivational intervention has an effect on academic self-efficacy and mastery goal orientation (p<0.01). Conclusion: Considering the impact of cognitive motivational intervention on increasing academic self-efficacy and the goal orientation of students' mastery, this method can be used to increase their academic progress. It is important to mention that the data presented in this study is self-reported. Although this method of data collection is a reasonable and defensible method, it would be useful to conduct research that examines similar constructs using data obtained from other sources such as teachers and parents. The current research, like other experimental designs, also had limitations, one of which was the small sample size, which reduces the generalizability of the findings; To solve this limitation, it seems necessary to conduct a study with a larger sample size in order to reach more stable results. Another limitation of this study was not considering the academic progress of the students. Considering the academic progress can affect children's self-efficacy, therefore, the results may have been integrated with the effects of academic progress, which should be cautious in generalizing the results, and it is suggested to control the educational progress and the level of children's motivation in future studies. According to the results of the current research and previous studies, it can be said that the cognitive motivational multidimensional intervention is effective and can be used, but schools are facing problems in the field of implementation, and the implementation of this approach requires planning and policy making in educational programs.