While personal performance-approach goals (PAp goals) have already been successfully bifurcated into normative and appearance PAp goals, the same distinction has not yet been applied to performance-approach goal structures (PAp goal structures). The present study therefore aimed to (a) test the factorial two-level structure of PAp goal structures…

The effects of ability performance goals, normative performance goals, and mastery goals on anxiety, interest, and performance were examined in a series of experiments. Challenging problem-solving tasks that would demonstrate the effects of each performance goal more clearly were designed. Groups of early adolescents (Study 1) and college students…

This study aims to examine the relationship between approach achievement goals, the fear of shame embarrassment failure, and coping strategies in secondary school science courses. Academic coping was handled in four dimensions: positive, projective, denial, and non-coping. The sample of the study included 249 sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade…

This study examined the effects of a self-regulated learning teaching unit on students' performance calibration, goal attainment, and attributions in physical education. Participants were 101 fifth- and sixth-grade students who were randomly assigned to an experimental (57 students) and a control group (44 students). Calibration indexes were…

The goal of this study is to identify the relationship between K-12 teachers' self-efficacy beliefs, classroom goal structure and use of instructional strategies. The study also aims to determine if there is variance in the relationship between these constructs for primary versus secondary school teachers. Data collection involved completion of a…

Students' goal strivings are known to be connected with important outcomes, both academically and with regard to individual well-being. In spite of their importance, our knowledge of factors contributing to their early development is rather limited. In this longitudinal study on school beginners (N = 212), we focused on the interrelationships…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of goal specificity and scaffolding on the programming performance and self-regulation of elementary students engaged in learning game design. This study recruited 232 students for the experimental activities. Two levels of goal specificity were employed: specific and nonspecific.…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that a nonlinear relationship exists between a performance-classroom climate and the reading achievement of adolescent students with learning disabilities (LD). Participants were 62 students with LD (Grades 5-9) from public elementary schools in northern Greece. Classroom climate was…

Value-added (VA) models measure teacher contributions to student learning and are increasingly employed in educational reform efforts. Using data from 35 seventh-grade teachers and 2,026 students across seven schools, we employ VA methods to measure teacher contributions to students' motivational orientations (mastery and performance achievement…

The purpose of this study was to examine a possible relationship between student perceptions of parental involvement and student goal orientation for an ethnically diverse fifth grade elementary population from high-poverty schools. This study was quantitative in nature and employed the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) to assess the…

Motivation is a fundamental educational challenge for adolescents in the United States, and particularly for immigrant youth. The motivation to achieve, especially in mathematics, declines during adolescence. Most of what is known about motivation is based on studies of predominately middle-class White students; yet the influx of immigrants over…

This study investigated preservice elementary teachers' achievement goal orientations for learning mathematics and the relationship of those goals to their attitudes toward mathematics. Self-report instruments were administered to assess three achievement goals--mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoid, and three constructs of…

Achievement goal theory distinguishes between mastery goals (the goals of developing competence) and performance goals (the goals of demonstrating competence) [Ames [1992] "Journal of Educational Psychology" 84: 261-271]. In this study, we employed this theory aiming to better understand why adolescents' motivation to learn science…