Origins of children's learned helpless and mastery-oriented achievement patterns in the family

Learned helplessness is an important individual difference that affects children's performance in achievement settings. Despite evidence that parents have a consistent and long-term influence on their child's achievement motivation and performance, few studies have examined parents' influence on children's helpless and mastery achievement patterns. Thus, this study examined the origins of children's achievement motivation patterns in the family by observing third grade children (10 helpless and 11 mastery oriented) and their mothers performing a series of solvable and insolvable problem-solving tasks. The results provide evidence that the mothers of mastery children may optimize their child's achievement motivation by modeling mastery patterns of behaviors during the insolvable puzzles, discouraging their child's helpless behaviors while promoting mastery behaviors, showing sensitivity and responsiveness to their child's ability perceptions and requests for help, and structuring an achievement environment which appeared to emphasize learning versus performance goals. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for interventive techniques which may improve achievement motivation in children, and directions for future research on the origins of helpless and mastery achievement patterns in the family are outlined.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio