Individual differences in achievement goals: A longitudinal study of cognitive, emotional, and achievement outcomes

Within achievement goal theory debate remains regarding the adaptiveness of certain combinations of goals. Assuming a multiple-goals perspective, we used cluster analysis to classify 1002 undergraduate students according to their mastery and performance-approach goals. Four clusters emerged, representing different goal combinations: high mastery/performance (i.e., multiple goals), dominant mastery, dominant performance, and low mastery/performance (i.e., low motivation). In a longitudinal analysis over one academic year, the clusters were compared on cognitive appraisals (expected achievement, perceived success), achievement-related emotions (enjoyment, boredom, anxiety), and objective measures of academic achievement (final grade in Introductory Psychology, GPA). The low-motivation cluster demonstrated the least adaptive profile across all outcomes. The multiple-goals, mastery, and performance clusters showed equivalent levels of achievement; however, students in the performance cluster were more psychologically and emotionally vulnerable than the multiple-goals and mastery clusters. Our discussion focuses on the immediate and potentially long-term implications of specific goal combinations for students and educators, with particular attention to understanding the cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities of students in the performance cluster which appear despite satisfactory achievement levels.     

Do performance goals promote learning? A pattern analysis of Singapore students’ achievement goals

This study investigated how achievement goals are combined to affect students’ learning. We used a multiple goals perspective, based on mastery (i.e., mastery approach) and performance (including both approach and avoidance components) goals, to examine the achievement goal patterns of 1697 Singapore Secondary 3 students in their math study. Four types of goal clusters emerged from latent class cluster analyses: Diffuse (moderate multiple), Moderate Mastery (moderate mastery/low performance approach and avoidance), Success Oriented (moderate mastery/high performance approach and avoidance), and Approach (high mastery and performance approach/low performance avoidance). Analyses of covariance were conducted to compare these four clusters on eleven cognitive, behavioral, and affective learning outcomes. In general, students in the Success Oriented and Approach groups were higher on self-efficacy, subjective task values, class engagement, homework engagement, time management, and meta-cognitive self-regulation than those in the other two groups. In addition, students in the Approach and Moderate Mastery groups were more likely to make effort when encountering difficulties in learning math, showed lower test anxiety, lower negative affect, and achieved higher scores in math than students in the other two groups. These findings suggest that the goal profile with high mastery and performance approach goals combined with low performance avoidance goals is most beneficial for learning, whereas high performance approach goals, when associated with performance avoidance goals, have some negative effects on affective outcomes. The patterns help to refine distinctions in performance goals, and are discussed in the context of academic achievement in Singapore.     

The relations between filial piety,goal orientations and academic achievement in Hong Kong

This study examined the relationships among filial piety, goal orientations, and academic achievement among Chinese students. A survey of 336 university students in Hong Kong was carried out to collect information on their filial piety beliefs, goal orientations and grade point averages. Structural equation modelling indicated that reciprocal filial piety was associated with mastery orientation, which is associated with academic achievement in Chinese students. Authoritarian filial piety was associated with performance orientation, including performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals, which contribute positively and negatively, respectively, to academic achievement in Chinese students. Findings were interpreted based on Chinese cultural factors and considerations.     

Students’ perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement: Consequences on achievement goals

The present study examined whether students’ perceptions of two major facets of parental and teacher academic involvement (i.e., academic support and academic monitoring), contribute to the process of students’ achievement goals adoption. French junior high-school students completed two questionnaires assessing first their perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement, and then their achievement goals three months later. Factorial analyses showed that students differentiated parental academic monitoring from parental academic support, while predominantly perceiving their teacher academic involvement as reflecting monitoring. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that, as expected, students’ perceptions of parental academic support were positively related to mastery goals while unrelated to performance goals. Also as expected, perceived academic monitoring was associated with performance goals, although the findings revealed an equal contribution of perceived parental and teacher involvement. This new insight about the antecedents of students’ achievement goals emphasizes how important is the role of parental and teacher academic socialization.     

Academic anxieties: which type contributes the most to low achievement in methodological courses?

Students’ academic achievement in courses with a high mathematical content can be affected by their levels of trait, math and test anxiety. In this study, 180 university students were assessed on these types of anxiety and the relationships between them and students’ performance were evaluated. Higher levels of math anxiety were related to a low academic achievement, but a high level of test anxiety was related only to an increase in the number of errors. Moreover, although women reported higher levels of trait, math and test anxiety than their male peers, their academic achievement was similar. We conclude that math anxiety is the main emotional factor that can affect students’ performance in these courses and some proposals to help highly math-anxious students are discussed.     

Psychological Maladjustment and Academic Achievement: A Cross-Cultural Study of Japanese, Chinese, and American High School Students

American, 1,633 Chinese, and 1,247 Japanese eleventh-grade students, 5 indices of maladjustment included measures of stress, depressed mood, academic anxiety, aggression, and somatic complaints. Asian students reported higher levels of parental expectation and lower levels of parental satisfaction concerning academic achievement than their American peers. Nevertheless, Japanese students reported less stress, depressed mood, aggression, academic anxiety, and fewer somatic complaints than did American students. Chinese students reported less stress, academic anxiety, and aggressive feelings than their American counterparts, but did report higher frequencies of depressed mood and somatic complaints. High academic achievement as assessed by a test of mathematics was generally not associated with psychological maladjustment. The only exception was in the United States, where high achievers indicated more frequent feelings of stress than did low achievers.     

Achievement Motivation Goals in Relation to Academic Performance in Traditional and Nontraditional College Students

This study extended Dweck's model of achievement motivation to the collegiate level, and it is the first to apply this model to nontraditional students. We examined the relationship between goal orientations and academic performance in 262 undergraduate students grouped by nontraditional vs. traditional status. Although both groups rated themselves higher on learning goals than on performance goals, non-traditional students endorsed learning goals even more strongly than their traditional peers. Goal orientations were a better predictor of academic success than student status. Consistent with Dweck's model, a learning goal orientation was positively related to successful academic performance for both groups. The relationship between performance goals and academic success was less straightforward, but students who rated both goal orientations as relatively weak had the lowest cumulative GPAs. Traditional and nontraditional students differed on variables that were inversely related to academic performance. Less successful traditional students endorsed irrational beliefs (a possible index of learned helplessness), while less successful nontraditional students worked more hours at a paid job.     

PROCRASTINATION AND THE 2 × 2 ACHIEVEMENT GOAL FRAMEWORK IN MALAYSIAN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

The present study investigated academic procrastination in the context of the 2 × 2 goal achievement theoretical framework within a population of 450 Malaysian undergraduate students, aged 18 to 25 years. Participants completed the Achievement Goal Questionnaire and the Tuckman Procrastination Test. Approach dimensions of both the mastery and performance goal orientations were found to be positively correlated with procrastination, but the avoidance dimensions of the mastery and performance goal orientations were not associated with procrastination. In regression analyses, mastery approach was the strongest predictor of procrastination, suppressing the effect of performance approach. The results suggest that the Western values underlying the achievement goals portrayed by the goal achievement model may not accurately reflect the motivations that are intrinsic to non‐Western individuals. Further research is required to either validate such a tool in non‐Western cultures or, alternatively, investigate alternative factors that may potentially influence procrastination within this demographic.     

Motivational goal orientation, perceptions of biology and physics classroom learning environments, and gender

Researchers have reported persuasive evidence that students?? perceptions of their classroom learning environment account for significant variance in cognitive and affective outcomes (e.g. intrinsic motivation, self-concept, liking for particular subjects and students?? intention to drop out). The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between students?? perceptions of classroom learning environment and motivational achievement goal orientations towards biology and physics, as well as the influence of gender. Participants (N?=?1538) were high school science students from the north-eastern region of Thailand. Our results suggest that motivational goals are linked to differences in students?? perceptions of learning environment and levels of biology and physics classroom anxiety. We found that females adopted significantly higher levels of mastery and performance approach goals towards biology, while males adopted significantly higher levels of mastery and performance approach goals towards physics. Males adopted significantly higher levels of performance avoidance goals towards both biology and physics. Positive associations emerged between gender and the adoption of specific performance goals, perceived degree of competition in biology and physics classrooms, and levels of biology and physics classroom anxiety. These results suggest that motivational goal orientations and perceptions of learning environment are gender-dependent and domain-specific for the two science content areas.     

Intelligence beliefs,goal orientations and children’s academic achievement: does the children’s gender matter?

This study evaluated how gender is related to children’s intelligence beliefs, goal orientations and academic achievement and whether there are gender differences in how intelligence beliefs and goal orientations are related to academic achievement. The participants, 362 seventh grade students (55.8% girls; Mage = 13.20, SD = .57 years), completed measures regarding their intelligence beliefs and goal orientations at the beginning of the second semester and the grades were collected at the end of the semester. Girls reported higher scores on incremental belief, mastery goal and higher achievement but lower levels of performance avoidance compared to boys. The relations between intelligence beliefs and academic achievement were fully mediated by both performance goals. Further, there were no gender differences in the associations among intelligence beliefs, goal orientations and achievement. The findings reveal that goal orientations are a mechanism that might explain why intelligence beliefs are linked with academic achievement in early adolescence.     

Perceived competence and autonomy as moderators of the effects of achievement goal orientations

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of two moderators – perceived competence and perceived autonomy – in the relationships of achievement goal orientations with a broad range of learning‐related variables, including interest, effort, learning strategy use and academic achievement. Perceived competence and autonomy played roles as moderators by strengthening the positive effects of a mastery goal pursuit on outcome measures of adaptive use of learning strategies and effort, respectively. However, no moderating role of either perceived competence or perceived autonomy was found for the effect of a performance‐approach and performance‐avoidance goal pursuit. In addition, perceived competence played a significant role in determining the level of academic achievement in the context of multiple‐goal pursuit. For students with high perceived competence, the adoption of high performance‐approach goals resulted in a higher level of achievement regardless of the levels of mastery goals. In contrast, students with low perceived competence showed the highest achievement when high performance‐approach goals are paired with low mastery goals.     

Temporal dynamics between faculty goals,burnout/engagement,and performance in teaching and research: A latent change score approach

Motivation plays a central role in faculty members’ professional lives—with achievement goals having been found to have important links with their burnout/engagement and performance. However, the few studies investigating these links were cross-sectional and considered only one of the two equally important work domains of faculty members. In the present research, we analyze the temporal relationships between achievement goals and burnout/engagement as well as performance and investigate domain specificity of goal pursuit by considering goals for teaching and for research. We conducted a longitudinal study (4 measurement points across two years) including 681 German faculty members. Multivariate Latent Change Score modeling attested that in both domains, mastery-approach goals were positively related to subsequent development of performance, while performance was also positively related to subsequent development of mastery goals, creating a double positive loop. Performance goals and work-avoidance goals were differentially associated with performance in both domains, indicating that the effects of goals can be bound to different contextual features. For overall burnout/engagement, our results implied that primarily research goals mattered for its development (with performance-avoidance and work-avoidance goals being risk factors), while high burnout levels were associated with subsequent reduction of adaptive mastery-approach goals in both domains. This highlights the relevance of achievement goals for burnout/engagement and performance of faculty and illuminates their complex temporal dynamics that can also meaningfully inform achievement goal research in other contexts.     

The roles of perceived parental expectation and criticism in adolescents’ multidimensional perfectionism and achievement goals

Perfectionism consists of personal predispositions and attitudes toward performance. Although there is some disagreement in the field regarding how to best define and measure perfectionism, most studies have supported a distinction between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. The current study examines a model in which students’ perceptions of parents’ standards and criticism are proposed as antecedents of multidimensional perfectionism, which in turn are hypothesised to be associated with types of academic achievement goal orientations. The sample consisted of 256 high school students who completed questionnaires assessing adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism, perceptions of their parents and personal achievement goals. Structural equation modelling supported the hypotheses suggesting that high parental standards are positively associated with the adaptive perfectionist characteristic of self-organised perception, which in turn are associated with a mastery goal orientation. Parental criticism predicted the maladaptive perfectionist characteristic of concern over mistakes, which in turn was found associated with a performance-avoidance goal orientation.     

Who benefits from mastery-approach and performance-approach goals in college? Students’ social class as a moderator of the link between goals and grade

Although approach forms of achievement goals (mastery and performance goals) have been shown to predict academic achievement in college, recent research underscores that these associations are rather weak and not consistently observed. The present study tests students’ social class (in the present research, generational status) as a moderator of the relationships between both mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals and final grade. One hundred students (45 first-generation students and 55 continuing-generation students, M _age = 18.9, SD = 1.52) answered an achievement goal scale related to one of their classes at the beginning of the year. Their final grade for this class was obtained three months later. As expected, performance-approach goals positively predicted final grade only for upper-class students, while mastery-approach goals tend to do so for lower-class students, supporting the idea that different kinds of motivation could predict students’ achievement depending on their social class.     

Goal orientations and achievement among Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong

This study examined four goal orientations and their relationships to achievement among 1041 Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong. These students endorsed learning and social goals over performance‐approach and performance‐avoidance goals. The endorsement of learning goals emerged consistently as the significant predictor predicting achievement in academic, non‐academic, and social/leadership areas. Implications of the findings for coordinating different goal orientations for enhancing achievement in different areas are discussed.     

Achievement goals and school achievement: The transition to different school tracks in secondary school

During the transition from elementary school to secondary school, in Germany, students are assigned to different school tracks, academic or non-academic, that differ markedly in compositional and institutional characteristics, e.g., the level of cognitive activation and performance standards are higher in academic tracks than in non-academic tracks. Currently, there is a lack of research examining the changes in achievement goals (mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals) and in the association between achievement goals and school achievement during the transition to these different school tracks. There were 1646 students who participated in a large-scale, three-wave longitudinal study from Grade 4 to Grade 6. While results revealed only slight differences between the two school tracks, the three types of achievement goals declined over time. In elementary school mastery-approach goals were positively and performance-approach goals negatively associated with school grades. After the transition to secondary school mastery-approach goals predicted school grades positively, whereas performance-approach goals negatively influenced achievement (academic track). Overall, the results indicate that between-school-tracking plays a minor role for the development of achievement goals and the relation between goals and achievement.     

Academic buoyancy mediates academic anxiety’s effects on learning strategies: an investigation of English- and Chinese-speaking Australian students

Abstract

A primary goal our study was to explore whether relations between academic anxiety and students’ use of a range of learning strategies (memorisation, elaboration, personal best [PB] goals and cooperation) were mediated by academic buoyancy. We were also interested in extending knowledge of anxiety and its role in students’ learning strategy use. Given mixed findings regarding the impact of language spoken at home on psycho-educational factors, our third aim involved investigating the extent to which relationships were moderated by language (English vs. Chinese-speaking). The sample consisted of n = 380 English-speaking and Chinese-speaking (Mandarin and Cantonese) Australian high school students, with groups (n = 190 each) matched on age and gender, and controlling for parental education and prior academic achievement. We found mediation effects of academic buoyancy across the four learning strategies. In addition, anxiety was positively associated with memorisation, elaboration and PB goals in the mediation analyses. Mediation effects were broadly similar across the two languages; however, there were some significant differences across the two groups. Findings hold relevance for future research on academic buoyancy’s nomological network, the role of language spoken at home in the academic process and the design of interventions addressing academic buoyancy and academic anxiety.     

Demonstrating competence within one’s group or in relation to other groups: A person-oriented approach to studying achievement goals in small groups

Two studies investigated students’ adopted mastery and performance goals for group work, with an interest in exploring whether performance-approach goals functioned differently in small groups depending on whether the social comparison target resides outside the group (i.e., between-group comparison; performance-approach between group goals) or within the group (i.e., within-group comparison; performance-approach within goals). Using a person-oriented approach, six achievement goal profiles for group work were identified for middle school students in science (N_Study1 = 309) and upper elementary school students in mathematics (N_Study2 = 218). Some profiles included varying patterns of goal endorsement (e.g., high mastery goals, low performance-approach goals) while others reflected similar levels (high, medium, low) of goals. Across both studies, the six goal profiles were associated with varying patterns of group processes, cognitive engagement, and achievement. Most notably, students in profiles with high performance-approach within group goals had more detrimental outcomes, even when mastery goals were also strongly endorsed. In contrast, students in profiles with high mastery alone or in combination with high performance-approach between group goals had adaptive group process, cognitive engagement, and achievement outcomes. Implications for the conceptualization of performance-approach goals in small groups and cautions for fostering normative standards and intergroup competition when structuring group activities are discussed.     

Students’ achievement goals,emotion perception ability and affect and performance in the classroom: a multilevel examination

Performance at school is affected not only by students’ achievement goals but also by emotional exchanges among classmates and their teacher. In this study, we investigated relationships between students’ achievement goals and emotion perception ability and class affect and performance. Participants were 949 Greek adolescent students in 49 classes and their Greek language and mathematics teachers. Results from multilevel analyses indicated that students’ mastery-approach and performance-approach goals were positively related to positive affect whereas performance-avoidance goals were negatively related to positive affect. At class-level, relationships between achievement goals and affect were moderated by students’ emotion perception ability. These findings highlight the importance of emotion abilities and their role in motivational processes for class-level outcomes.     

成就目标、自我效能、学习策略和学业成就的关系研究

对545名中学生进行测量，以探讨成就目标、自我效能、学习策略与学业成绩的关系。结果表明：掌握目标、成绩目标与自我效能、学习策略有显著的正相关，回避目标与自我效能、学习策略存在显著的负相关，自我效能与学习策略有显著的正相关；掌握目标、自我效能和学习策略与学业成绩有显著的正相关，而回避目标与学业成绩则有显著的负相关；学习策略直接影响学业成绩，成就目标和自我效能对学业成绩的影响是间接的。