Motivational Beliefs and Learning Strategies as Predictors of Academic Achievement of Prospective Teachers

In the present study, an attempt was made to explore motivational beliefs and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement of prospective teachers. The data were collected from 300 prospective teachers of different districts of Punjab through self-constructed socio-demographic sheet and Motivational Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The results of the study revealed out of 6 dimensions of motivational beliefs, task value has positive significant correlation relationship between motivational beliefs and academic achievement while test anxiety dimension of motivational beliefs emerged to be a significant and negative contributor of academic achievement. However, intrinsic goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation, control of learning beliefs and self-efficacy for learning and performance have insignificant and no correlation relation between motivational beliefs and academic achievement. There were five dimensions of learning strategies, out of which elaboration was positively related but not significant correlation with academic achievement of prospective teachers and rehearsal, organization, critical thinking, meta-cognitive self- regulation were all negatively non-significant. Resource management strategies has four dimensions, peer learning and help seeking were significant but peer learning emerged to be a positive contributor of academic achievement. Educational Implications of the results have been discussed.