Academic motivation in self-efficacy, task value, achievement goal orientations, and attributional beliefs

The author assessed academic self-efficacy, task value, ability and effort attributions and mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance achievement-goal orientations in reference to English, Korean, mathematics, and general school learning among 389 Korean high school girls. Results corroborated M. Bong's (2001) previous report that students form motivational beliefs that are subject-matter specific and that some beliefs generalize more than others across multiple academic domains. On average, attributional beliefs appeared least "generalizable," followed by task value and mastery achievement-goal orientations. Academic self-efficacy beliefs were correlated moderately, whereas performance-approach and performance-avoidance achievement-goal orientations demonstrated strong correlation across different contexts. Motivational beliefs in each of the specific school subjects were more strongly correlated with motivational beliefs in general school learning than with beliefs in other areas of subject matter.