Middle School Students’ Perceived Cost Toward Learning And Its Mediation Effect In The Relationships Between Parental Academic Pressure And Academic Outcomes

Mitigating students’tendency to avoid learning is an urgent practical dilemma,especially given the expanded focus on reducing academic burdens in the Chinese education system.According to situated expectancy-value theory,cost refers to students’perceived negative aspects of engaging in a task,and it plays a unique role in understanding adolescent students’avoidance motivation and maladaptive academic outcomes.Despite its importance in student academic functioning,cost is underexplored in empirical literature.Although cost perceptions may be the key determinant of students’avoidance intentions in educational contexts,to our knowledge,limited information is available to corroborate this claim.Additionally,no study has explicitly investigated the associations between perceived parental academic pressures and students’cost perceptions towards learning.While foreign scholars have displayed burgeoning interest in the topic of cost perceptions,domestic research in this area is still in its nascent stages.Hence,the current study aims to examine the role of cost among Chinese middle school students through two independent studies.The objective of Study 1 was to investigate the underlying reasons behind Chinese students’avoidance tendencies towards learning via open-ended questions.Our aim was to evaluate the extent to which students’responses could be classified into the four types of cost based on situated expectancy-value theory.A total of 425 middle school students described the reasons for their avoidance tendencies in learning contexts using their own words.Subsequent analyses of the students’open-ended responses revealed that the present dimensions of cost perceptions cover the actual reasons for 69%of middle school students’avoidance intentions,and students evidently perceive four types of cost,namely effort,opportunity,ego,and emotional costs.Without a theoretical framework,the analyses suggested that these students were disinclined towards learning for a variety of reasons,including schoolwork,social factors,exams,homework,negative emotions,alternative attractions,lack of motivation,exhaustion,lack of self-discipline,and external factors.Among these,the most prominent reasons were schoolwork,social factors,exams,homework,and negative emotions,particularly with regard to the prevalently encountered academic tasks of great difficulty and socially-related factors concerning parents.In Study 2,we investigated the role of parental academic pressure in middle school students’achievement and school burnout,with a focus of the potential mediating roles of distinct costs.Results based on a group of 616 Chinese 7^th students revealed that parental academic pressure as an important contextual factor positively predicted cost perceptions and school burnout,while negatively predicting students’academic achievement.Different types of cost demonstrated differential mediating pathways.Specifically,emotional and opportunity costs mediated the predictive paths from parental academic pressure to school burnout.Emotional,effort,and ego costs mediated the relationship between parental academic pressure and achievement.Additionally,girls perceived higher levels of effort,ego,and emotional costs in comparison to boys,although the mediation model remained consistent across genders.In summary,this study contributes to the limited literature by revealing the crucial role of cost as a determinant of middle school students’avoidance intentions in learning contexts.Moreover,the results underscore the significance of identifying the four distinctive types of cost,which emerged as significant motivational mediators between students’perceived parental pressures and their academic outcomes.These findings lend support to the notion that cost perceptions can be a valuable psychological construct to guide future research and provide a complementary perspective to the situated expectancy-value theory.Regarding the practical implications,the results offer insights into how to intervene in students’avoidance intentions within learning contexts and mitigate the adverse effects of parental pressure on academic performance.