Trajectories of implicit theories and their relations to scholastic aptitude: A mediational role of achievement goals

Implicit theories of intelligence play an important role in students’ academic motivation and achievement. This longitudinal study examined how the trajectories of implicit theories of intelligence from Grade 8 to Grade 10 were related to Grade 12 SAT achievement via Grade 11 achievement goals. We employed parallel process models to examine changing patterns of Korean students’ (N = 6491) entity and incremental theories over three years. Results showed that both entity and incremental theories increased over time. The intercept and the slope of entity theory were negatively related with the intercept and the slope of incremental theory, respectively. In line with Dweck’s theoretical framework, increases in incremental theory were found to predict SAT achievement via mastery-approach goals, whereas increases in entity theory predicted SAT achievement via performance-approach goals. The results indicate that different types of achievement goals play unique roles in mediating the relation between changes in implicit theories and SAT achievement.