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In spite of the invariance of the constructs investigated, there were some dif-
ferences between the two groups examined. Latinos were somewhat lower on
elaboration, academic efficacy, performance approach, and performance avoidance
for example, and somewhat higher on maladaptive help-seeking, worry, and mastery
goal orientation. There is no simple explanation for these differences, as the litera-
ture focusing on comparisons between the two groups in this study is too small. One
factor that may be important is the select nature of the Latino students in this sample.
Given that they were in a 4-year college, they may not be comparable to the general
population of Latino students. While their prior grades and SAT scores were lower
than those of White students, the fact that they were admitted to a relatively selec-
tive institution may have been a factor in higher mastery goal orientation, and lower
levels of prior knowledge (high school GPA and SAT verbal and math) may have
been related to lower efficacy and increased maladaptive help-seeking. The findings
here were somewhat consistent with Garcia et al.'s (1993) study with Latino and
African American students who found that success was correlated with motivation
and prior achievement, and not with learning strategies. Given the extensive litera-
ture that suggests the impact of learning strategies on academic outcomes (Azevedo
& Cromley, 2004; Butler & Winne, 1995; Ley & Young, 2001; Zimmerman, 1990;
Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990: Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001), this deserves
more exploration.
In addition, SES was related to OTL and prior knowledge for Latino but not
for White students. This may be a function of other prior work on differences in
OTL between low-SES schools and higher-SES schools. As noted earlier, differ-
ences have been found in instructional arrangements, materials, teacher experience,
and teacher-student ratio (Wenglinsky, 1998). Interestingly, while OTL was not
found to have significant direct effects on achievement, it was related to other
motivational variables such as self-efficacy, performance approach, and mastery
goal orientation in the study relative to White students (academic self-efficacy
only).
One of the most interesting findings was the very strong effect of prior knowl-
edge on GPA in comparison to the relatively smaller effects of background variables
(and other variables as well) such as OTL and SES compared to what we expected.
For example, prior knowledge was found to be strongly and positively related to
achievement for both White and Latino students. This is a different pattern than what
other studies have found, in particular the relatively stronger impact of self-efficacy
compared to prior knowledge. Chemers et al. (2001), for example, found that while
high-school grades were significantly related to college grades, self-efficacy at the
time of college entrance was related to grades at the end of the first year of college,
even when prior GPA was controlled. Other recent studies (Pietsch et al., 2003;
Pintrich, 2003) as well as a recent review of self-efficacy studies (Valentine et al.,
2004) have confirmed these patterns. Because the focus of this study was on math
in particular, this may have had an impact on the present findings.
An additional interesting finding was the lack of direct effects of the motiva-
tional variables on achievement. As the previous literature has suggested, arguments
have been made for a multiple-goal approach in which mastery and performance
