The Relationship of Performance Goals, Personality, and Ability With Academic Achievements in Majority and Minority Groups of Bachelor-Degree Students

Abstract

Achievement goal theory is one of the major theories of the relationship between learners’ perception of learning processes and their academic achievements. The present research was focused on the relationship between learners’ goals and the academic achievements of Hebrew-speaking students, who belong to the majority group, and Arabic-speaking students, who belong to the minority group. The research also combined personality measures and measures of ability of the students, in order to better understand the relationships among the variables in the two groups. Matched samples of 104 students from each group were studied. The data were collected at the beginning of the second year of studies and the students were then monitored for 2 years. The findings indicate that among the Hebrew-speaking students, the level of performance goals was higher that among the Arabic-speaking students. In both groups, different learning goals contributed to the explained variance in final grades.