Primary School Students’ Performance Orientation - The Czech Republic Research

Abstract

Introduction: The current school is strongly focused on student performance. Each student faces a large number of learning tasks, which place considerable demands on them, arouse in them a different degree of interest, evoke a different degree of commitment to work, are associated with different expectations or have a different degree of attractiveness. Performance situations are associated with pleasant experiences but also with experiences of failure, which in their essence affect the activity or passivity of the student, and thereby affect the prioritization of the necessity to excel or the need to avoid failure. These needs are the basis of performance orientation, which is analysed in the paper. The aim is to verify whether the motivational orientation of students is related to their beneficial outcomes. Methods: The quantitative nature of the paper made it possible to use both indicators of descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation) and inductive statistics (Mann-Whitney U test, Pearson's Chi-square test, Shapiro-Wilk normality test). The surveyed sample of 363 respondents consisted of an available selection of students from 14 primary schools in five regions of the Czech Republic in 2019. The data were collected physically at schools using a standardized questionnaire. Students were acquainted with its purpose and content. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out electronically, both in terms of methodology in accordance with the research design of Hrabal and Pavelková (2011). Results: The analysis of the data of the sample of respondents revealed that the performance orientation of problem students differs statistically significantly from that of the performance motivation of non-problem students in two cases: 1) the need for successful performance, where differences were verified using hypothesis H1 and 2) in the ratio of performance needs, where the differences were verified using hypothesis H4. In other cases, no statistically significant difference was found between the two groups. Discussion: The presented findings correspond to current domestic (Krykorková & Váňová, 2010) and foreign research (Weiner, 2000). They draw attention to the importance of a positive motivation of the student in terms of his degree of involvement in the development of his own dispositions, which affects the benefit of the student. Positively motivated students achieve better results with a comparable intellect than non-motivated students (Man & Mareš, 2005). The role of the teacher and his knowledge of motivational types of students is of paramount importance in this respect. Limitations: The sample under examination of respondents does not bring a representative sample in terms of the representation of students according to school years, regions of the Czech Republic or according to the representation of so-called problem or non-problem students. The outcomes of the survey can thus be applied only to a given sample of respondents. Conclusion: The benefitting for students in the sample showed lower positive motivation than their intellectually comparable non-problem classmates. It is a question of reserves, the use of which is a challenge not only for themselves, but also for the school and parents. The largest differences between the two groups were recorded in the specific ratio of positive and negative motivation 4: 2 within the T1 type and in the ratio 1: 3 within the T6 type. The attempt to determine the causes of this fact, especially proposing a remedy, is a topic for further research in this area.