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<p>This study examines how Project-based Learning (PjBL) is recontextualized through competitive logics in China’s exam-oriented setting and explores how these competitive interpretations reshape students’ motivations during PjBL implementation. The study, situated in a qualitative ethnographic research paradigm, draws on multiple qualitative data sources, involving classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and open-ended questionnaires, to capture students’ situated interpretations and motivational experiences during PjBL implementation. The results show that PjBL tasks are commonly treated as competitive events because of long-standing habits of comparing and ranking students and pressures from score requirements and evaluation indicators in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting of Eastern Chinese higher educational ecology. These interpretations produce a three-stage mechanism: Generation, Transformation, and Alienation (GTA), through which motivation shifts toward controlled, performance-based participation. The Competitive Motivation Trap (CMT) in the study provides an interpretive account of how cultural habits, psychological responses, and indicator-based management interact to normalize competitive behaviors and reduce meaning-oriented engagement. The study emphasizes that it is necessary to reconsider assessment structures, reduce metric-driven routines, and strengthen process-focused learning opportunities to support collaborative and communicative aims in PjBL environments.</p>

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Competitive motivation trap in western project-based learning in Chinese higher education

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月4日

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  • Guosheng Xu

摘要

This study examines how Project-based Learning (PjBL) is recontextualized through competitive logics in China’s exam-oriented setting and explores how these competitive interpretations reshape students’ motivations during PjBL implementation. The study, situated in a qualitative ethnographic research paradigm, draws on multiple qualitative data sources, involving classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and open-ended questionnaires, to capture students’ situated interpretations and motivational experiences during PjBL implementation. The results show that PjBL tasks are commonly treated as competitive events because of long-standing habits of comparing and ranking students and pressures from score requirements and evaluation indicators in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting of Eastern Chinese higher educational ecology. These interpretations produce a three-stage mechanism: Generation, Transformation, and Alienation (GTA), through which motivation shifts toward controlled, performance-based participation. The Competitive Motivation Trap (CMT) in the study provides an interpretive account of how cultural habits, psychological responses, and indicator-based management interact to normalize competitive behaviors and reduce meaning-oriented engagement. The study emphasizes that it is necessary to reconsider assessment structures, reduce metric-driven routines, and strengthen process-focused learning opportunities to support collaborative and communicative aims in PjBL environments.