Relationship of Goal Orientation with Academic help-seeking Behaviour among Secondary School Students

This study explored the association between Goal Orientation and Academic Help-seeking Behaviour of secondary school students. Goal Orientation is an outlook towards demonstrating ability and provides a motivational framework for how individuals recognize, construe and evaluate responses to achievement situations. There are two approaches that individuals pursue in achievement settings: a mastery goal orientation to develop aptitude by acquiring new skills and mastering new situations and a performance goal orientation is to demonstrate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. Help-seeking is a dynamic strategy that serves as an aid to achieve academic success in the face of challenging tasks. In the present paper, relationship of goal orientation with academic help-seeking behaviour was found and Goal Orientation was predicted on the basis of academic help-seeking and demographic variables. Descriptive Survey Method was used. Goal orientation questionnaire by Elliot and McGregor (2001) and Academic Help-seeking scale from Self-stigma of academic help-seeking adapted by Winograd was administered. Both the scales were adapted in Indian condition. The Cronbach Alphas for the GO and AHS were 0.80 and 0.76 respectively. The findings of the study showed that mastery goal orientation approach was significantly and positively correlated with academic help-seeking. On the other hand, performance goal orientation approach was not significantly correlated with academic help-seeking behaviour. It was also investigated that Academic help-seeking has significant impact on goal orientation. The practical implications and future directions of the study are discussed.