Case Study Instruction Experiences in Educational Psychology and Pre-Service Teachers’ Achievement Goals for Learning

Abstract

Case studies have become a popular vehicle for pre-service teachers to be introduced to the challenges of classroom teaching and participate in hypothetical classroom decision-making. Because of the similarity of case study instruction to those classroom structures proven to influence a student’s adoption of mastery-approach goals, we expected that case study learning would predict educational psychology students’ adoption of these adaptive goals. However, there is limited empirical research on the impact of case study instruction on student’s motivation, particularly for students’ adoption of achievement goals. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between students’ perceived experiences in case study instruction and each of four achievement goals identified in the goal literature. Since self-efficacy may be another important influence on students’ achievement goals, we also included it as another predictor variable in our regression analyses. Both online and traditional on-campus students are included in this study. While neither performance goal was significantly related to case study instruction for either class format, perceptions of case study instruction predicted online students’ mastery-approach goals and predicted lower rates of mastery-avoidance goals in traditional students. Self-efficacy predicted greater likelihood of mastery-approach goals for traditional students and lower rates of mastery-avoidance goals in both class formats.