Personal best goals in alignment with environmental perceptions of classroom activities

Abstract

One of the objectives of any educational endeavor is helping learners to adopt set of personal goals for their achievement. This is known as personal best (PB) goals. It is also believed that PB can fluctuate in line with external factors. The aim of this study is to study these goals in association with students' perception of the learning environment. To do so, 143 students studying in high schools of Mashhad completed two questionnaires: the first one was the translated version of Personal Best Questionnaire designed by Martin (2006) measuring specific, challenging, competitive and self-improvement goals. The second one was the Persian version of 'Students Perceptions of Classroom Activities' scale designed and validated by Gentry and Gable (2001) and translated to Persian and revalidated by Ghanizadeh and Jahedizadeh (2015). It contains four dimensions (interest, challenge, choice, and joy). The results indicated that all four subscales of students' perception fit the data well and significantly predicted personal goals. Furthermore, there were positive associations between perceptions of classroom activities and the subscales of PB. The highest relationship was between challenging goals and perceptions of challenge followed by the correlation between students' choice and personal goals.