Academic dishonesty is a pervasive problem undermining the effectiveness of educational institutions. From a motivational perspective, researchers have proposed achievement goals as antecedents of academic dishonesty. Empirical findings corroborate the notion that mastery goals (focus on learning and competence development) are negatively linked…

Research indicates that university instructors struggle with compromised subjective well-being (SWB) and have faced further challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although studies have found instructors' achievement goals to be important motivational factors linked to their well-being, longitudinal research is needed to clarify the…

Background: Teachers' achievement goal orientations are known to affect teachers' beliefs and behaviour. In contrast, we know relatively little on how school climate is associated with teachers' achievement goals, even though theoretical ideas can be derived from self-determination theory and empirical research on the impact of goal structures.…

Although professional training or development opportunities can help university academics to expand their competences and implement high quality educational practices, academics differ in the extent to which they engage in such learning opportunities and their resulting learning gains. A theoretical explanation for these differences involves their…

Students' engagement in class stems from academic and social motivations, which can be expressed through their academic and social achievement goals. Using a person-centered approach, we investigated the configurations of academic and social achievement goals and their relevance for aspects of students' academic (achievement, self-concept, goal…

University instructors' goals for teaching are important for teaching quality. However, studies examining factors that shape instructors' goal adoption are lacking. Using data from 785 instructors, we investigated whether implicit theories (ITs) about the malleability of intelligence constitute one such factor. Following achievement goal theory…

Purpose: Professional training courses play an important role for higher education instructors and their teaching quality. However, participants strongly differ in how much they learn in these courses. The present study seeks to explain these differences by focusing on attention as a central aspect of their behavioral engagement that can stem from…

Previous research has successfully used basic psychological need satisfaction and achievement goal approaches for describing the motivations of university faculty for teaching and for explaining differences in faculty experiences, success, and learning. However, the interplay between these motivational constructs has been largely ignored, with…