Exploring effects of culture on students' achievement motives and goals, self-efficacy, and willingness for public performances: The case of Chinese students' speaking English in class (original) (raw)

Chinese students' motivation and achievement

Oxford Handbook of Chinese Psychology, 2010

This article reviews recent evidences about Chinese students' outstanding academic performance and discusses the major themes and issues arising from the study of their motivational characteristics. Despite Chinese students' high academic achievement, research has shown that they actually display a generally lower sense of efficacy than their Western counterparts. As this article explains, there are at least two ways in which Chinese students differ from their Western counterparts in relation to competence beliefs. Firstly, with academic success being emphasized as a fulfilment of one's duty and achieved through effort, these success experiences may not be as significant a source of self-efficacy as in the Western context. Secondly, the importance of self-efficacy may not be as prominent in producing achievement behaviour as in the West, since there is no demonstrated relationship between their sense of efficacy and effort expenditure.