Achievement Goal Orientations

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe the principles of a person-oriented approach to studying individual differences (and similarities), and how it can be applied to the study of students' achievement goal orientations. First, we briefly illustrate the approach, which provides a way of looking at the relative emphasis of different achievement goal orientations, thereby explicitly addressing the issue of multiple goals and their associations with important outcomes. Second, we give a comprehensive review of studies that have applied such an approach to investigating students' achievement goals. The diversity in conceptualizations, methods, and study samples in the studies complicates the interpretation of the findings, but some generalizations can nevertheless be made. Based on the review, we conclude that students with qualitatively different achievement goal orientation profiles can clearly be identified, and that the extracted profiles are rather similar across studies. Further, it seems that such profiles are relatively stable over time and meaningfully associated with learning and various educational outcomes (e.g., academic achievement, self-perceptions, well-being, task-related motivation, and performance). The review also contributes to the debate concerning the advantages of endorsing different goals. Finally, we raise some methodological concerns, discuss implications for learning, and provide suggestions for future research. ACHIEVEMENT GOAL ORIENTATIONS 3 Achievement Goal Orientations: A Person-Oriented ApproachIn this chapter, we will explore a way of studying motivation that focuses on the profiles of students' preferred goals and related outcomes in achievement contexts. We argue that taking into account the relative emphasis of different goals or goal orientations provides us with valuable information about individual differences in motivation and how those differences are associated with various academic and personal outcomes. This so-called person-oriented approach is well suited for the study of group and individual differences within and over time, as it is predicated on the assumption that the population is heterogeneous with respect to the patterns of variables. Variables are considered less as agents and outcomes and more as properties of individual and their environment (Laursen & Hoff, 2006). In the following, we will first briefly describe and illustrate the person-oriented approach, after which we will review a body of research that has applied such an approach to investigating students' achievement goals and goal orientations. What Is a Person-Oriented Approach?Often when we refer to motivation in everyday discussions, we tend to describe individuals or groups of individuals: "he was not motivated to do the task", "she has always displayed immense interest in mathematics", "the team clearly lacked confidence", and so on.Yet, in research, we are inclined to discuss about the constructs: interest seems to predict course choices, anxiety interferes with task performance, confidence contributes to ...

Striving for Success but at What Cost? Subject-Specific Achievement Goal Orientation Profiles, Perceived Cost, and Academic Well-Being

“…To sum up, despite some subject-specific differentiation in achievement goal orientations in the course of students' development, the between-domain correlations of goal orientations vary from moderate (mastery orientation) to high (performance-and avoidance-related orientations) among students of different ages (Bong, 2001(Bong, , 2004Sparfeldt et al, 2015;Hornstra et al, 2016). This, together with the finding showing goal orientations to be rather stable over time (Pulkka and Niemivirta, 2013;Lo et al, 2017;Tuominen et al, 2020b), implicates some degree of domain-generality; in other words, students seem likely to display certain goal preferences across contexts and subject domains despite some task-or situation-specific variation (see Niemivirta et al, 2019).…”

“…According to the achievement goal theorists, the goals individuals are pursuing create a kind of framework within which the individuals interpret situations and which further produce patterns of cognition, emotion, and behavior (Dweck and Leggett, 1988; see also Senko et al, 2011). Basically, two lines of research differing in the level of specificity and operationalization exist: one that focuses on achievement goals, the specific end-states individuals strive for in a given context (Elliot, 1999), and another which looks at achievement goal orientations, the more general tendencies reflecting goal preferences and adoption (Nicholls, 1989;Dweck, 1992; for an overview, see Niemivirta et al, 2019). Here, we follow the latter line of research.…”

“…Research has widely supported the notion that students can hold multiple goals simultaneously (e.g., Pintrich, 2000;Barron and Harackiewicz, 2001;Niemivirta, 2002;Daniels et al, 2008). Until now, many researchers have already explored the different combinations of achievement goals and their associations with diverse outcomes by utilizing a person-oriented approach (for reviews, see Wormington and Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017;Niemivirta et al, 2019). The person-oriented approach (Bergman et al, 2003;Bergman and Trost, 2006) enables the extraction of groups of individuals according to the patterns they show in terms of the studied individual characteristics (e.g., achievement goal orientations) as well as examining how big a proportion of the sample shows a particular pattern and how specific patterns are related to the outcomes of interest.…”

“…Within the numerous studies on achievement goal orientation profiles, there are variations in the achievement goal variables chosen for classification, sample characteristics, and analytical methods (see Niemivirta et al, 2019). Studies also differ in whether they examine domain-general or domain-specific achievement goal orientations.…”

“…The goals students hold and adopt in achievement contexts is one likely factor contributing to this. Although the widely studied achievement goals have often been researched generally in relation to learning and studying (see Niemivirta et al, 2019), it is reasonable to assume that individuals also demonstrate variation in their preferences with respect to different subject domains; not all school subjects are alike (see Bong, 2004;Sparfeldt et al, 2015;Hornstra et al, 2016;Jansen in de Wal et al, 2016). Striving for a goal also requires investing time and effort, thus implying that there always is some subjective cost in play.…”