Parental involvement and elementary school students' goals, maladaptive behaviors, and achievement in learning English as a foreign language

• Parents' literacy involvement at home predicts EFL students' trichotomous goals.
• Perceived parent performance goals predict EFL students' mastery goals and approach goals.
• EFL students' approach goals are negatively related to cheating, disruption, and help-avoidance.
• Cheating and help-avoidance are negatively related to EFL learning achievement.

The study applied structural equation modeling to examine the predicted relationships among perceived parent goals, parents' literacy involvement at home, students' personal goals, maladaptive behaviors, and achievement for elementary school students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in Taiwan. The results indicated: (1) parents' literacy involvement positively predicted students' mastery goals (MGs) and performance-approach goals (PAGs) but negatively predicted approach-avoidance goals (PAVs); (2) perceived parent performance goals were positively related to MGs and PAGs, whereas perceived parent mastery goals negatively predicted PAGs; (3) the predicted relations between PAGs and cheating, disruption, and help-avoidance were all negative, but MGs negatively predicted cheating and help-avoidance; and (4) cheating and help-avoidance were negatively related to English learning achievement. Parents' literacy involvement was a stronger predictor of students' goals than perceived parent goals. EFL elementary school students may be encouraged to adopt PAGs and MGs that are adaptive for English learning outcomes.