This article examines the classroom learning environment in relation to achievement goal theory of motivation. Classroom structures are described in terms of how they make different types of achievement goals salient and as a consequence elicit qualitatively different patterns of motivation. Task, evaluation and recognition, and authority dimensions of classrooms are presented as examples of structures that can influence children's orientation toward different achievement goals. Central to the thesis of this article is a perspective that argues for an identification of classroom structures that can contribute to a mastery orientation, a systematic analysis of these structures, and a determination of how these structures relate to each other. The ways in which interventions must address the independency among these structures are discussed in terms of how they influence student motivation.

We studied how specific motivational processes are related to the salience of mastery and performance goals in actual classroom settings. One hundred seventy-six students attending a junior high/high school for academically advanced students were randomly selected from one of their classes and responded to a questionnaire on their perceptions of the classroom goal orientation, use of effective learning strategies, task choices, attitudes, and causal attributions. Students who perceived an emphasis on mastery goals in the classroom reported using more effective strategies, preferred challenging tasks, had a more positive attitude toward the class, and had a stronger belief that success follows from one's effort. Students who perceived performance goals as salient tended to focus on their ability, evaluating their ability negatively and attributing failure to lack of ability. The pattern and strength of the findings suggest that the classroom goal orientation may facilitate the maintenance of adaptive motivation patterns when mastery goals are salient and are adopted by students.

The purpose of the study was to determine if competitive and individualistic goal structures elicit achievement cognitions that have been associated with helpless versus mastery-oriented children, respectively. Fifth-and sixthgrade children performed at a high or low level on a novel achievement task within either a competitive or individual goal structure. A "thought-matching" methodology was used to assess the type and frequency of children's thoughts. Results revealed that children made more ability attributions in the competitive than in the individual condition. In the individual condition, children displayed a mastery orientation in that they made more effort attributions and engaged in self-instructions and self-monitoring more than did children in the competitive condition. Ability attributions were predictive of children's positive and negative affective reactions. Results suggested that children were thinking about responses to the question "Was I smart?" in the competitive setting but were thinking about "How can I do this task?" in the individual setting.

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We studied the achievement goals of mothers in relation to their interpretation of school success, preferences for certain types of school feedback, task choices, causal attributions, and valuing of certain personal characteristics in their children. Over 500 mothers of children in kindergarten through fifth grade were surveyed. Mothers' preferences for mastery versus performance-based achievement goals were differentiated in terms of the priority mothers gave to the demonstration of effort versus high performance as desired student outcomes. The findings showed that mothers' views about the nature of learning in schools can be differentiated according to their achievement goal emphasis. Mastery and performance goals involved different beliefs about how learning occurs, how it is fostered, how it is evidenced, and how it should be evaluated. The findings suggest that children of mothers with different achievement goals may be encouraged to pursue different types of achievement activities, may be evaluated on different aspects of their behavior, and may experience different types of expectations. Moreover, the findings suggest that a performance goal priority may have especially negative consequences for those children who have doubts about their ability or who do not compare favorably with others.Recent analyses of achievement motivation have focused on the goal-directed nature of behavior and have suggested that achievement goals serve to organize a range of achievement-related beliefs and guide subsequent decision-making and behavior (