The relationship between goal setting and school success in the context of personal and organizational variables

The issue examined in this study is the effect of an intervention training which may cause an increase in motivation and cause an alteration in the absentee increases and exam point decreases among foreign language learners. It has been observed that the goals students set were long-term, not specific and usually instrumental. This has led to the need for goal setting training. In this research, the effect of goal setting instruction on students' success in English, individual variables such as self-regulation, self-efficiency, self-esteem and institutional variables such as school climate was investigated. In addition, factors predicting academic success were examined and some models of mediation and moderation were tested. The sample of the research was comprised of 109 students aged between 18 to 22 taking Basic English courses at Duzce University, School of Foreign Languages. In pre-test session, an English Achievement Test and all the scales were administrated to the students. Then, the students were divided into experiment and control groups and the students in the experiment group were given goal setting instruction. After that, in the post-test session, the same achievement test and the same scales were administrated once more. In the end of the study, the number of samples suitable for analysis reached up to 53. Although it was anticipated that the experiment group (goal setting instruction group) would get more points than the control group (no instruction group) in the achievement test, a significant difference between the groups couldn't be found. However, self-regulation skills of the students decreased in the instruction group while it increased in the no-instruction group. These findings are different from those found in literature; so, it was concluded that goal setting instruction may have decreased internal motivation of the students. In the further studies, achievement could be evaluated in more accordance with the students' goals. As for mediation and moderation model testing carried out in the research, it was found out that self-regulation had a mediation relationship; in other words, school climate predicted achievement through self-regulation. Moreover, communication predicted success through self-esteem. Individual and institutional variables were examined together in this research and this could be an example for future research. In addition, mediation models could be tested with different variables.