Effects of College Students’ Achievement Goals and Academic Engagement on their Self-Assessment Practice: Exploring Gender Differences

Abstract

The student self-assessment is considered as a formative assessment process in which students reflect on and judge the quality of their learning and appropriately modify it, and it is also a representative strategy for assessment as learning(AAL). The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of achievement goals and academic engagement on college students' self-assessment practice and explore their gender differences. For this purpose, the data of 317 college students were analyzed, and the results are as follows. First, it was found that the learner's mastery goal had the most positive effects on student self-assessment practice by mediating cognitive or agentic engagement. Second, the higher the cognitive or agentic engagement, the higher the tendency to perform self-assessment by self-monitoring external resources(SEFM). Relatively, the higher the cognitive engagement, the more frequently the use of internal resources(SIF), while the higher the agentic engagement, the higher the tendency to obtain information by asking questions to others such as professors, parents and friends(SEFI). Third, in the internal process of self-assessment, SEFM, SEFI, and SIF, which are feedback-seeking behaviors, showed statistically significant direct effects on self-reflection. Fourth, multigroup structural model analysis confirmed gender differences in detailed pathways. Finally, through the results of the study, the necessity of preparing a plan for cultivating self-assessment literacy in an efficient and adaptive way for each learner was discussed.