Parental goal orientations for their kindergarten children: Introducing the Nuremberg Parental Goal Orientation Scales (NuPaGOS)

AbstractThis study introduces the Nuremberg Parental Goal Orientation Scales (NuPaGOS) which were designed to measure kindergarten children's parents' goal orientations for their children. The postulated four goal orientations are learning goal orientation, performance goal orientation, well-being goal orientation and fear of over-demanding orientation. We expected that the four factors underlie a g-factor. The hypothesis concerning the structure of the goal orientations was confirmed in a study with 203 parents of kindergarten children. Correlational analyses with validation variables provide initial evidence for the concurrent and discriminant validity of the NuPaGOS.Keywords: parental goal orientation; kindergarten children; learning goal orientation; performance goal orientationIntroductionIndividuals pursue various goals in learning contexts. Goal orientation theories are the attempts to systematize these goals and to identify the reasons why individuals subscribe to them (for reviews, see Ames, 1992; Elliot, 2005; Elliot & Thrash, 2001; Maehr, 2001; Midgley, 2002). Elliott and Dweck (1988) conceptualize goal orientations in learning contexts as a "program" of cognitive processes that have cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences. Due to the fact that these "programs" extend over a wide range of similar learning contexts, the term "orientation" was used to describe the relative high stability across situations and over time.Originally, two major types of goal orientations were studied. One type is usually referred to as learning goal, mastery goal or task-involvement goal; the other type is usually referred to as performance goal or ego-involvement goal. However, the concept of goal orientation was subsequently expanded in three different manners. First, additional goals, such as social goals, were designated to complement learning and performance goals (Wentzel, 1991, 1996). Secondly, the concept of goal orientation was considerably elaborated to encompass an integrated pattern of beliefs, attributions and affects that produce the intention of behavior (Ames, 1992). Thirdly, and most important for this paper, the concept was extended to the recipients of the goal orientations, such as teachers or parents (Ziegler, Dresel, & Stoeger, 2008).Parents are an important source of supervision, advice, encouragement and assistance for their children and especially for their motivation (e.g., Duda & Hom, 1993; Duda & Whitehead, 1998; Ebbeck & Becker, 1994; Kimiecik, Horn, & Shurin, 1996; White, 1998). Ames and Archer (1987) and Dweck and Leggett (1988) contended that parents provide an extremely important context for the development of children's goal orientations. For example, they suggest that parents who are task- versus ego-oriented may influence their children's goal orientation quite differently from each other. They propose that, as a function of parents' achievement goal orientation, children may focus on certain types of activities more than others, might be reinforced for different choices, and might be evaluated on different aspects of their behavior (see also Ames, 1992). Previous research has yielded ample evidence to support this assumption. For example, Kim, Schallert, and Kim (2010) showed that students' goal orientations were predicted by their perceptions of parental goal orientations, or motivating styles for them. Friedel, Cortina, Turner, and Midgley (2007) found that 7th grade children's perceptions of their parents' goal orientation for them were significant predictors of their own goal orientations.Similar results have been found in a wide range of domains and also for constructs correlated with goal orientations. For example, Bergin and Habusta (2004) examined the goal orientations of young male ice hockey players and their parents. For ego orientation, boys' self-ratings correlated significantly with parents' rating of their goals for their sons. …