David Watkins’s research while affiliated with University of Melbourne and other places

The purpose of this research was to explore gender differences and cultural differences in school motivation among students from eight culturally diverse groups from Western and non-Western societies. The selected groups come from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Qatar. More than 10,000 secondary school students reported their mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic motivation. Results showed (very) small to moderately large gender differences, which were largely in line with prior research in Western societies. Moreover, significant differences in school motivation across the eight cultural groups were found, however, only the Qatari sample strongly deviated from the other samples. In all cultural groups, females had slightly higher scores on mastery motivation and social motivation (except for Qatari students), and in several Western and non-Western samples, males had slightly higher scores on performance motivation. Gender differences in extrinsic motivation were less straightforward.

The understanding and application of forgiveness varies across cultures. The current study aimed to examine the effect of a culture-adaptive Forgiveness Intervention on forgiveness attitude, self-esteem, empathy and anxiety of Mainland Chinese college students. Thirty-six participants were randomly allocated to either experimental groups or a wait-list comparison group, with 28 retained finally. Forgiveness, empathy, self-esteem and anxiety were assessed one week before and after a 10-week forgiveness programme integrating Enright process model and Chinese values. The intervention increased participants' forgiveness attitudes. No significant effect was reported on empathy, self-esteem and anxiety. These findings demonstrate that the Culture-adaptive forgiveness intervention is potentially promising to enhance forgiveness attitude in societies where collectivist, cooperative and interdependent principles are dominant.

To find ways to enhance the learning of academically disadvantaged students across mainstream and vocational education settings is of increasing concern to researchers and practitioners. Based on Biggs’ 3P learning model, the present study tested the predictive roles of three important psychological variables, namely academic self-concept, perceived control and approaches to learning in affecting academic achievement of low-achieving Chinese secondary students in vocational education. Results showed that compared to approaches to learning and perceived control, academic self-concept was the most significant variable predicting academic achievement of vocational students. In addition, the predictive relation between academic self-concept and academic achievement appeared to be subject-specific (e.g., English self-concept is a better predictor of English achievement compared with math self-concept). Taking consideration of both the low-achievement background and low subject-specific self-concept of vocational students, academic self-concept enhancement interventions are highlighted and discussed in relation to the pivotal role of positive academic self-concept in learning achievement and other desirable educational outcomes.

We examined how achievement (mastery and performance) and social goals (affiliation, approval, concern, and status) influenced various learning outcomes in two collectivist cultures. Filipino (n 355) and Hong Kong Chinese (n 697) secondary students answered the relevant questionnaires. Regression analyses using mastery, performance, and social goals as predictors and learning outcomes as criterion variables were done separately for the HK and Filipino samples. Results indicated that the all the social goals were positively associated with adaptive learning. Mastery goal emerged as a positive predictor of deep learning and self-regulation across both contexts. To understand the relative importance of different goals, causal dominance analysis was used. Different types of goals were causally dominant for the HK and Filipino students. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

In order to extend previous research on the twofold multidimensionality of academic self-concept (i.e. its domain-specific structure and separation into competence and affect components), the present study tests its generalisability among vocational students from mainland China. A Chinese version of self-description questionnaire I was administered to Year 1 secondary vocational students in three academic years (2006, 2007, 2008; N = 1053) measuring the self-concepts in Chinese (native language), English (non-native language), math and general school. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that models separating competence and affect components within each domain fitted better than pure domain-specific models. This pattern was consistent across the subsamples of students studying in the three academic years. Thus, the present findings support the generalisability of the twofold multidimensionality of academic self-concept to Chinese vocational students and to students’ native and non-native languages. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for self-concept research and practice are discussed.

The present study examined the practice of forgiveness among participants from China (N = 172) and New Zealand (N = 91). We tested a theoretical model describing the relationships between collectivism, individualism, and forgiveness. Participants from China were more collectivistic and less individualistic than were participants from New Zealand. Overall, participants from New Zealand were more forgiving than were participants from China. Collectivism was positively related to decisional forgiveness in Chinese participants. Decisional forgiveness independently predicted conciliatory behaviour among participants from China, but this was not the case for participants from New Zealand. Thus, the hypothesized model received qualified support.

Achievement goal theorists have mostly focused on the role of mastery and performance goals in the school setting with little attention being paid to social goals. The aim of this study was to explore the role of social goals in influencing educational outcomes in two collectivist cultures: Hong Kong and the Philippines. Results showed that social goals were able to predict additional variance in various adaptive educational outcomes even after controlling for the effects of mastery and performance goals. Implications for cross-cultural research are discussed.

The aim of this study is to assess the cross-cultural applicability of the Chinese version of the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM; McInerney & Sinclair, 1991) in the Hong Kong context using both within-network and between-network approaches to construct validation. The ISM measures four types of achievement goals: mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic goals. A total of 697 high school students participated in the study. Results of the within-network test showed that the ISM had good internal consistency reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized four-factor structure. In addition, multigroup confirmatory factor analyses showed factorial invariance across students of different genders, year levels, and school types. The between-network test indicated that the achievement goals assessed by the ISM correlated systematically with different aspects of students’ self-concepts. These findings provide evidence of the applicability of the ISM among Hong Kong Chinese students. Implications for cross-cultural research are discussed.

The present research focused on investigating the effectiveness of two treatments to enhance academic self-concept among low-achieving junior middle school students, who continue their learning in the secondary vocational education (SVE) system of China. The results demonstrated that the intervention delivered in natural classroom settings significantly enhanced English self-concept, the targeted facet of the academic self-concept. Moreover, the intervention did not change Chinese and Mathematics self-concepts (two control facets of academic self-concept) significantly, lending support to the multidimensional conceptualization of self-concept. It should be noted that the improvement in English achievement among the two experimental classes was statistically significant as well, providing more empirical evidence for the effectiveness of feedback intervention. Future use of the two treatments to enhance academic self-concepts in natural classroom settings is discussed.