Research on effective teaching and learning shows that when students set and monitor their own learning goals, it significantly narrows achievement gaps. While teacher-written objectives are important for clarity, when these objectives are re-written as personal statements, they evolve from what a teacher needs to teach to what students want to…

Background: Socio-economic status is one of the most important factors shaping students' motivation and achievement but has seldom been explored in relation to achievement goals. Aims: This study aimed to investigate whether mastery-approach goals explain the link between SES and key learning-related outcomes ("mediation") and whether…

Objective: Existing research demonstrates that being mastery oriented is associated with several academic outcomes such as better engagement and achievement. To date, however, there is a dearth of research evidence on the emotional payoffs of mastery orientation. The current study explored the link between mastery orientation, subjective…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Research has demonstrated that compared to mastery-approach goals (i.e., trying to develop a mental ability), performance-approach goals (i.e., trying to outperform others) elicit higher metacognitive judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs). However, the underlying mechanism of the effects of achievement goals on JOLs remains unclear.…

Guided by an affective theoretical process, we surveyed college students (N = 397) to examine the effect of college instructors' lecture misbehaviors on students' emotional interest directly, and indirectly through affect toward the course content, among students who varied in their desire to master the course material (i.e., first- and…

Chemistry is often daunting for college students, contributing to high attrition rates in STEM majors. This study explored students' perceptions of the challenges in studying chemistry, including task effort and emotional costs. We examined how these perceptions, along with goal approaches, impact academic performance and retention in general…

Students' perception of teachers' mindset beliefs (TMB) is associated with their school engagement (SSE). Based on SSE's contextual-personal interplay, perceived classroom goal structures (CGS) and students' mindset beliefs (SMB) were considered. Data from 1071 high school students were analyzed. The results show that CGS significantly mediated…

Background: Mastery and performance goals are typically measured as trait-like abstract goals. However, in their daily academic pursuits, students pursue more concrete goals. The pursuit of these goals is replete with obstacles that can lead to an action crisis. Aims: We examined how mastery and performance goals affect progress, effort and…

It has been suggested that self-organized study groups need to regulate their learning at three levels: the self-, the co-, and the socially shared level. Yet, little is known about how individual learner characteristics influence these regulation processes. In this study, we investigate how students' achievement goals are associated with…

Background: Encouraging students to adopt a mastery goal orientation can help increase learning and motivation. However, the effect of mastery goal orientation interventions specifically in upper-division online elective psychology courses has not been studied. Objective: The purpose of this replication study was to examine the effects of a…

This systematic meta-analytic review investigated the relations between achievement goals and internalizing symptoms and disorders, namely, anxiety and depression. The number of samples for each focal relationship ranged from 3 to 36. The results indicated significant effect sizes for the relations between mastery-approach goals and anxiety (r = -…

The concept of mastery learning was formally identified and explained by Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in 1968. Since that time, there have been strong supporters (Guskey, 2010; Hunter, 1982; Meece et al., 2006) and critics (Anderson & Burns, 1987; Arlin & Webster, 1983; Slavin, 1987, 1989) of this strategy and the educational…

In this paper, we present a meta-analysis of the motivational and performance effects of experimentally induced achievement goals and the moderating effects of "goal standard" and "goal framing"; comprising 90 studies which provided 235 effect sizes (11,247 participants). The findings show that, relative to performance-approach…