Motivation for achieving high marks : are Anglo and Asian children in Australian schools similar or different?

It can be argued with some confidence that all members of the school community, educators and parents alike, wish for students to be motivated in their learning. This desire stems from the recognition that motivated students are more likely to exhibit positive development with regard to their academic, social, and psychological well-being (Lau, 2009). The weight of consideration given to motivation by educators and parents has been similarly echoed in the attention given by researchers in the literature. That is, the study of motivation as it relates to learning has an established longevity in educational research. Despite such warranted attention, the constructs of achievement and motivation have been largely studies from a Western perspective. As underscored by Trumbull and Rothstein-Fisch (2011), the very definition of achievement and motivation is culturally loaded and thus may not have universal concurrence or application. One major difference between Eastern and Western perceptions of achievement is an over-emphasis of achievement in terms of test scores in Eastern countries undermining motivation to mastery knowledge, and an over-emphasis of motivation and interest even though students do not achieve well in test scores in Western countries (Liu, 2009). In this chapter, we attempt to adopt both a multidimensional and cross-cultural perspective toward the study of motivation with the hope of contributing to the theoretical and substantive knowledge regarding the construct of motivation from a cross-cultural perspective, when students’ major goal is to achieve high scores in tests.