Research On College Students' Academic Help-Seeking Ability And Its Influencing Factors

The critical period for the cultivation of college students' basic knowledge and comprehensive ability is the stage of undergraduate education.Higher education always cared about the core topic that how to promote the students' learning ability improvement.As one of the important abilities,the academic help-seeking ability has attracted more and more attention from academia.This research takes the undergraduates of "H" University in Shanghai as the research object,attempts to analyze the current situation of college students' academic helpseeking ability and its related influence factors through the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.Based on this,this research starts from the perspective of process and constructs the "four abilities and three factors" analysis framework of academic helpseeking.Describing the current situation of college students' academic help-seeking ability and the differences in various demographic variables.The main purpose of this research is to explore the effects of three factors,learning motivation,individual learning status,and external environment,on the college students' academic help-seeking ability.Especially seeking the influence on the academic help-seeking ability's four sub-dimensions,help-seeking consciousness,help-seeking decision-making,help-seeking mode,help-seeking reflection.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,the college students' academic help-seeking ability is generally good,and in descending order of scores for the four sub-dimensions are help-seeking decision-making,help-seeking reflection,help-seeking mode and help-seeking consciousness.However,on the one hand,whether the first-generation of college students in their families have differences in overall academic help-seeking ability with other students,which means the non-firstgeneration college students in the family have a better academic help-seeking ability.On the other hand,there are no significant differences in overall academic help-seeking ability,no matter in terms of genders,the only child,normal college students,grades,subject types,birthplaces,and parents' received education levels.Secondly,in the four sub-dimensions of academic help-seeking ability,the help-seeking decision of the non-first-generation college students in the family is better than the firstgeneration college students.Whether the student is an only child in the family has significant differences in help-seeking consciousness and reflection,an only child is better than that of non-only children on help-seeking consciousness and reflection.The different students' birthplaces have a disparity in help-seeking consciousness,the undergraduates whose birthplaces are in the county and city is better than those whose birthplaces are villages or some rural areas.Mothers' received education level influences their children on help-seeking reflection,undergraduates whose mothers had received higher education are better than those whose mothers had not received higher education.But,in terms of genders,subject types,grades,and father's received education levels have non-significant distinctions in academic help-seeking ability and its sub-dimensions.Furthermore,this research measures the academic performance index by "class ranking" and " times of reward awarded by the school " by using the questionnaire and finds that in academic help-seeking ability and its four sub-dimensions the top-ranked college students are better than those of the lower-ranked college students.The undergraduates who have won more school awards have a better help-seeking sense.Thirdly,from the three factors,learning motivation,individual learning and external environment have a significant impact on college students' academic help-seeking ability as well.Specifically,the sense of self-worth has a negative impact on college students' academic help-seeking ability,the higher college students' sense of self-worth is,the lower academic help-seeking ability is.Belonging needed and respect needed has a positive impact on college students' academic help-seeking ability,the more college students feel belonging and love needed and respect needed,the higher performance of their academic help-seeking ability.The passion for classroom discussion and after-class discussion has a significant positive impact on college students' academic help-seeking ability,the discussion is more positive,the higher performance of their academic help-seeking ability.However,course interest and classroom atmosphere have no significant effect on college students' academic help-seeking ability,but have a significant impact on its sub-dimensional abilities.Learning motivation and class achievement goals have no significant effect on college students' academic help-seeking ability and its sub-dimensions.Finally,based on the above findings,this research puts forward the following suggestions for improving college students' academic help-seeking ability: universities should give full play to the functions of institutions such as academic guidance centers and carry out targeted activities around different dimensions of academic help-seeking so that to improve students' academic help-seeking ability.At the same time,the teachers should pay attention to improving college students' academic help-seeking ability,especially students' problem consciousness and representation ability.Meeting students' needs of belonging and respect in learning,and stimulating students' deep desire for knowledge.In the process of daily teaching,teachers should often encourage students to ask questions and form a classroom atmosphere of positive discussion,strengthen peer interaction.College students should establish a proper sense of self-worth,positive and correct attribution.And college students should cultivate course interest and increase internal learning motivation.Furthermore,college students should actively participate in classroom discussion and after-class discussion as well.