Academic Self-Schemas and their Self-Congruent Learning Patterns: Findings Verified with Culturally Different Samples

This paper reported two studies investigating high school students’ academic self-schemas in learning mathematics and their self-congruent learning engagement patterns. Using cluster analyses, Study 1 located two contrasting groups of students holding positive and negative self-schemas in learning mathematics among Chinese participants. MANOVA analyses showed that these two groups of Chinese schematic students differed from each other in the use of achievement goals, approaches to learning, and expected levels of performance. These findings were validated and extended in Study 2 using a culturally different sample, Australian students. Again, cluster analyses successfully classified Australian participants into positive and negative schematic clusters. It was also found that these two groups of schematic students approached learning mathematics in a self-congruent manner similar to those found in Study 1. The converging results in both studies lent empirical support to the theoretical formulation of positive and negative schematic students and the validity of using the self-schema concept to investigate motivation and learning. The differences in their learning engagement patterns were discussed in terms of students’ different academic self-schemas in learning mathematics.