Investigating the effects of Intelligence beliefs and achievement motivation on learning strategies and academic performance of agricultural students

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of intelligence beliefs and achievement motivation on learning strategies and academic performance of agricultural students. This research was descriptive - correlation with data collected using questionnaire. The statistical population included students in Colleges of agriculture at Universities of Tehran, BouAli Sina, Ilam, Shahid Bahonar Kerman, and Shiraz (N=6958). A sample of 273 students was randomly selected by using proportional random sampling method. Reliability and face validity of instrument were determined through opinions of faculty members and application of Cronbach's Alpha. The findings revealed that there were significant differences between achievement motivation and also, learning strategies of male and female students. But there was not any difference between intelligence beliefs of male and female students. According to the results, intrinsic achievement motivation and incremental intelligence belief had negative effects on surface learning and positive effects on deep learning. In contrast, extrinsic achievement motivation and entity intelligence belief had positive effects on surface learning and negative effects on deep learning. Furthermore, intrinsic achievement motivation, incremental intelligence belief and deep learning had positive effect on academic performance of agricultural students.