Mastery motivation (MM) is the psychological “push” to solve problems, meet challenges, and master ourselves and our world. MM in early childhood is often considered an important precursor of later achievement motivation (AM). Past research has documented the cultural specificity of AM in culturally Chinese societies as well as how Chinese parents are different from their European American counterparts in the way they socialize their children’s behaviors in achievement-related activities. Some research has even traced back to early childhood and, by using semi-structured interview with open-ended questions or recording parent-child conversations, revealed how parents verbalized what they cared most about their children’s learning. However, no research has systematically investigated parents’ opinions and priorities of the correct/incorrect or ideal/problematic behavioral manifestation of MM. Consequently, many behavioral/emotional features that may be salient in the construct of MM, which may lead to the reward and punishment that Chinese/American parents place upon their young children in problem-solving contexts, has not been mentioned or measured in prior research.
This study intended to investigate the culturally specific conceptions of what is normal and ideal when children face challenges in early childhood. In recent years, my research team has applied an organizational perspective of MM and developed an assessment scheme (the Q-sort of Mastery Motivation; QMM) to describe MM revealed by infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The Q-sort method has the advantage of translating theoretical constructs into broadband arrays of items written to refer to specific behaviors or to behaviors in specific contexts. In this way, each construct can be operationalized in great detail on its own terms. By observing infants and preschoolers in lab-based problem-solving situations, my research team has already documented the inter-observer, inter-context, and test-retest reliabilities as well as the convergent and discriminant validities of QMM. Other than using it as an observational scheme, QMM can also be a measurement tool for investigating the idealization of the best way for a young child to deal with challenge.
My major goal for this study is to recruit three groups of US participants, including societal opinion leaders (e.g., professors in developmental science, child psychologists, child psychiatrists, preschool principles), parents of young children, and college students, and ask each of them to define the hypothetically most mastery-oriented child from their own perspectives by using QMM. I will then compare the cultural and subcultural differences of the ideal template reveals in QMM from Taiwanese and Americans. Unfortunately, on March 26th, 2020, the all-state stay-at-home order due to COVID-19 pandemics brought my research activity in Colorado, US, to a sudden halt. Crisis management became critical if I still wanted to complete this project…