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…

Achievement goals of university instructors for teaching were examined. We investigated the structure of these goals, the stability of this structure across different groups of instructors, and the relations of these goals to teaching-related outcomes. Achievement goals, positive affect, attitudes toward help, and self-reported teaching quality…

The present work broadens previous research on students' mastery goals and intrinsic motivation by exploring their reciprocal effects using a longitudinal approach. To this end, a study using four measurement points was conducted during 10 weeks of one semester. The sample comprised 1156 students enrolled in psychology courses at a medium-sized…

Errors bear the potential to improve knowledge acquisition, provided that learners are able to deal with them in an adaptive and reflexive manner. However, learners experience a host of different--often impeding or maladaptive--emotional and motivational states in the face of academic errors. Research has made few attempts to develop a theory that…