Measuring and Understanding Self-Handicapping in Education by Alexandra Maria Patzak Mag. rer. nat., University of Vienna, 2015 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Educational Psychology Program Faculty of Education © Alexandra Patzak 2020 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Fall 2020 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Declaration of Committee Name: Alexandra Maria Patzak Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Thesis title: Measuring and understanding self-handicapping in education Committee: Chair: Margaret MacDonald Associate Professor, Education Philip H. Winne Supervisor Professor, Education Lucy LeMare Committee Member Professor, Education John Nesbit Committee Member Professor, Education Elina Birmingham Examiner Associate Professor, Education Raymond P. Perry External Examiner Professor, Psychology University of Manitoba ii Ethics Statement iii Abstract Self-handicapping is intentionally fabricating obstacles to performance. It is very prevalent in education where it interferes with learning and lowers academic achievement. Few self-handicapping experiments have approximated authentic learning situations, elevating concerns about ecological validity and generalizability. This study addressed several methodological concerns by (a) posing a task common in education, and (b) offering participants multiple occasions to choose among several productive, neutral, or self-handicapping approaches to learning. Undergraduate learners were randomly assigned to receive contingent or non-contingent success feedback on three learning tasks. Each task offered multiple occasions to claim or practise self- handicapping by making selections within a component of the software. Those selections caused changes in the learning environment while participants worked on tasks and generated data about self-handicapping more realistically situated and in finer grain than data gathered in prior research. Results indicate this method for unobtrusively recording data about self-handicapping validly represented the construct. Learners’ choices reflected preferences for certain handicaps and described patterns of hidden versus blatant self-handicapping. Evidence for self-handicapping and self-regulated learning across tasks was found. Some learners repeatedly self-handicapped, Others self-regulated learning over time by demonstrating metacognitive awareness, monitoring, and control of learning activities regardless of feedback provided. Encouraging metacognition may aid self-handicappers to more productively self-regulate their learning over time. Keywords: behavioral self-handicapping; claimed self-handicapping; self-regulated learning; metacognition; trace data iv Dedication To my family, who I can always count on. v Acknowledgements This dissertation is the result of some of the most enjoyable and enlightening years of my life. I am blessed with my lovely family, dear friends and colleagues who I cannot thank enough for their support throughout this journey. First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Phil Winne. There are no words to adequately express my appreciation for you as a supervisor. Your passion for learning science is truly inspiring and I feel privileged for the opportunity to work with you. I particularly treasure your shared excitement about my research and your balance between providing agency and gentle guidance. You surely grok mentoring! You have always supported me in my endeavors, and I cannot thank you enough for the numerous opportunities you have given me. I am grateful for the experience to work with a truly incredible committee that challenged me and shared their extensive expertise. Thank you, Lucy LeMare and John Nesbit, for your thoughtful advice and constant support throughout my doctoral program. I am deeply grateful to have collaborated with my dear lab colleagues and friends. Among many others who I was so privileged to have met, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Kenny Teng’s excellent work and support. He is the fearless IT developer in our lab who transmogrified my ideas of the self-handicapping panel into a smoothly operating Google Chrome extension. Many thanks to Jovita Vytasek, Zahia Marzouk, Mladen Raković, and Michael Pin-Chuan Lin for your support with my experiment. You are an amazing team. Thank you Jovita and Zahia for countless hours of laughter, believing in me, and sharing some of the most important moment of my life with me. I will fondly remember the many times Mladen’s humor made my day and even working with SPSS a great experience. Thank you Arita Lin for filling up my coffee mug and the wonderful memories we created. You all have encouraged me more than you might know. I cannot imagine my doctoral journey without either one of you. I would also like to thank Monica Lambatin who so efficiently scouted out areas to distribute flyers at SFU. Her keenness and effort -certainly accelerated my experiment. Many thanks to my participants for their time and effort to participate in my experiment, but also their curious questions and interest in my research that made this experience so enjoyable. vi I sincerely thank SFU and the Faculty of Education for their generous support in form of scholarships and funding that allowed me to focus on my dissertation research. Last but not least, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my amazing family for their continued support every step of the way. Thank you for your unwavering faith in me and continuously supporting my academic dreams even though they led me so far away from home. No words can describe my appreciation for David Kepplinger, the love of my live. You encouraged me to grow and achieve much more than I ever thought I could. I cannot imagine my life without you. I particularly would like to thank my Mama Roswitha whose strength and kindness has been a constant inspiration for me to reach above and beyond. My Papa Albert who always believes in me and taught me that everything is possible. Patricia, my sister who has always been a teacher and a person to look up to. Many thanks to my lovely Oma Bärbel Lang whose recipes and cooking advice kept me alive and happy, and my wonderful aunties Gabi Pliva, Gitta Köck, and Heidi Daser for their humor, kind words, and efforts to understand what my research is about. I love you all and am truly grateful to have a family like you. You have made this doctoral journey a wonderful experience and helped shape the person I am today. I am forever grateful that you came into my life. Thank you all! vii Table of Contents Declaration of Committee ................................................................................................ ii Ethics Statement ............................................................................................................ iii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv Dedication ....................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ vi Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... viii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... x List of Figures................................................................................................................. xi Chapter 1. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2. Review of the Literature ........................................................................... 5 2.1. Self-handicapping – An Overview .......................................................................... 5 2.2. Self-handicapping in Education ............................................................................. 9 2.3. Measuring Self-handicapping .............................................................................. 14 2.4. Measuring Self-handicapping in Education – Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................................................................ 25 Chapter 3. Method .................................................................................................... 29 3.1. Pilot Study Participants ........................................................................................ 29 3.2. Present Study Participants .................................................................................. 29 3.3. Materials .............................................................................................................. 31 3.3.1. Motivated Strategies for Learning ................................................................ 31 3.3.2. Behavioral Self-handicapping ...................................................................... 31 3.3.3. Web Quests ................................................................................................. 35 3.3.4. Rating of Choices in the Self-handicapping Panel ....................................... 36 3.3.5. Prior Knowledge .........................................................................................