Identifying undergraduate pharmacy students’ achievement goals and their effects on academic achievement and teachers’ qualities

The work for this thesis started with generic questions about achievement motivation and its application in pharmacy education settings. Questions like: what are pharmacy students’ preferred achievement goals? Are there any relationships between these achievement goals and academic performance? Is there any relationship between exam types and adopted achievement goals? Is student motivation in any way related to the qualities they value in their teachers? Such questions have guided this doctoral work since August 2010. For more than three decades, achievement goal theory has been one of the most influential theories investigating students’ motivation to learn (Conley, 2012). Four types of achievement goals have been identified by scholars (Huang, 2012; Hulleman et al., 2010): (1) mastery-approach, where individuals strive to understand and learn the tasks and material at hand as thoroughly as possible; (2) mastery-avoidance, where the individual’s aim is to avoid not understanding and learning the task thoroughly; (3) performance-approach, where the individual’s aim is to demonstrate superior performance compared to one’s peers; and (4) performance-avoidance, where the individual strives to avoid the demonstration of a perceived lack of ability or avoid appearing less talented than others. In order to begin to answer the above questions, a qualitative study was undertaken to investigate first year students’ and teaching academics’ expectations and perceptions of the university learning environment, including students’ preferences for what they expect and value in their teachers. The findings of this study yielded some important preliminary insights regarding learning and teaching in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney, Australia. From this preliminary work emerged the chief aims of the program of doctoral work – 1) to investigate achievement goals in pharmacy students and their relationships to academic achievement both cross-sectionally and longitudinally; 2) to tease out the influence of ethnic background on goal orientation and academic achievement; and 3) to examine the relationships between achievement goals, assessment type and academic performance. A further aim was 4) to examine the effects of goal orientation on students’ preferences for teachers’ qualities. A two-step psychometric validation of two measures of achievement goal orientations was undertaken first of all. The first analysis was conducted by sampling pharmacy students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney, Australia, and in the second analysis, pharmacy students from four countries (England, New Zealand, Wales and United States) were further sampled to confirm the replicability of the instrument in comparable pharmacy education settings. The outcome of this validation study was a robust instrument suited for research into pharmacy student achievement goals. This process paved the way for a further four studies. The first study sought to identify Australian undergraduate pharmacy students’ achievement goals and their relationship to both academic achievement and ethnicity, and to conduct a cross-sectional analysis of two cohorts. The second study followed these two cohorts (Cohort I from year one to year two and Cohort II from year three to year four) to assess the extent to which students’ goal orientations changed over time. The third study investigated the relationship between achievement goals, academic performance and assessment types in undergraduate pharmacy students, again with international participation by pharmacy cohorts from four countries; England, Wales, New Zealand and Australia. The fourth and final study aimed to examine how pharmacy students’ adopted achievement goals might influence their preferences regarding the qualities they would like to see in their teachers. The outcomes of these studies provide important and novel findings regarding students’ perceptions and preferences regarding their motivations for learning; the significance of validating apparently robust measuring instruments for local conditions; the importance of avoiding global measures of academic achievement when studying their relationship with achievement motivation ; the significant role that ethnicity plays in student achievement motivation; and how students’ achievement goals influence their preferred teaching styles of their teachers. This is the first project of its kind conducted into undergraduate pharmacy students’ achievement goal orientations and academic performance. The implications for pedagogical practices are discussed

The participants’ reasons for using dietary supplements (n = 275).

The participants’ reasons for using dietary supplements (n = 275).</p

Logistic regression results for herbal and protein intake across sexes (N = 275).

Logistic regression results for herbal and protein intake across sexes (N = 275).</p

Frequencies and percentages of sociodemographic variables by dietary supplement use (n = 531).

Frequencies and percentages of sociodemographic variables by dietary supplement use (n = 531).</p

Significant association between sociodemographics and attitude toward dietary supplements.

Significant association between sociodemographics and attitude toward dietary supplements.</p

The attitude of participants toward dietary supplement use (n = 275).

The attitude of participants toward dietary supplement use (n = 275).</p

S1 Data -

(XLSX)</p

Significant association between sociodemographics and different types of dietary supplements.

Significant association between sociodemographics and different types of dietary supplements.</p

Fig 1 -

a. The percentage of participants using dietary supplement, categorized in seven groups (n = 275). b. The percentage of participants using each dietary supplement (n = 275).</p