The relation between the learning environment (e.g., students' perceptions of the classroom goal structure and teachers' instructional discourse) and students' reported use of avoidance strategies (selfhandicapping, avoidance of help seeking) and preference to avoid novelty in mathematics was examined. Quantitative analyses indicated that students' reports of avoidance behaviors varied significantly among classrooms. A perceived emphasis on mastery goals in the classroom was positively related to lower reports of avoidance. Qualitative analyses revealed that teachers in high-mastery/low-avoidance and low-mastery/high-avoidance classrooms used distinctively different patterns of instructional and motivational discourse. High incidence of motivational support was uniquely characteristic of high-mastery/ low-avoidance classrooms, suggesting that mastery goals may include an affective component. Implications of the results for both theory and practice are discussed.

To better inform and improve classroom teaching and learning, now more than ever before, educational researchers need to effectively and efficiently describe essential components of positive learning environments. In this article, we discuss how our research findings about motivation in classrooms have led to a closer examination of emotions. We describe how motivation theories such as Academic Risk Taking, Flow Theory, and Goal Theory have helped us better understand emotions in our classroom research. Our findings suggest that engaging students in learning requires consistently positive emotional experiences, which contribute to a classroom climate that forms the foundation for teacher-student relationships and interactions necessary for motivation to learn. We conclude that we need to integrate emotion, motivation, and cognition theoretically and methodologically to move our research forward. New theories and methods, even new forms of intellectual discourse, are required. Therefore, we end this article by beginning a discussion of new directions for conceptualizing and researching classrooms in ways that will involve examining the emotions of students and teachers.

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The authors investigated the self-reported relationships among 5th-and 6th-grade students' achievement goals in mathematics, their negative affect about making mistakes, and their self-regulatory beliefs and behaviors. Cluster analysis revealed 4 motivational-affective patterns. Two groups were characterized by positive motivational-affective patterns and 2 suggested more problematic patterns related to different goal patterns, negative affect, and less positive self-regulatory behaviors and beliefs. Path analyses showed that negative affect after failure mediated performance goals and self-regulatory beliefs and behaviors. The authors propose a theory of achievement goals and affect that explains why students differ in their ability to tolerate error during learning. They also discuss practical and theoretical implications of the role of negative affect in achievement motivation.

Gardendale Public SchoolsStudents' (21 girls, 21 boys) self-reports of involvement in mathematics were related to instructional strategies observed in their upper-elementary classrooms. Students in high involvement classrooms reported challenges and skills as above average and matched, whereas students in low involvement classrooms reported skills as exceeding challenges. Students in high involvement classrooms also reported significantly more positive affect. Discourse analyses of instruction in high involvement classrooms revealed that teachers scaffolded instruction (i.e., negotiated understanding, transferred responsibility, and fostered intrinsic motivation). Instruction in low involvement classrooms was characterized by Initiation-Response-Evaluation sequences, emphasis on procedures, and extrinsic motivation strategies. Results imply that involvement can be socially constructed through whole class instruction and that researchers should give more attention to measuring and understanding situated motivation.

Observations of the first days of school in eight sixth-grade classrooms identified three different classroom environments. In supportive environments teachers expressed enthusiasm for learning, were respectful, used humor, and voiced expectations that all students would learn. In ambiguous environments teachers were inconsistent in their support and focus on learning and exercised contradictory forms of management. In nonsupportive environments teachers emphasized extrinsic reasons for learning, forewarned that learning would be difficult and that students might cheat or misbehave, and exercised authoritarian control. Teachers’ patterns of motivational and organizational discourse during math classes near the end of the year were consistent with the messages they expressed at the beginning of the year. When student reports of avoidance behaviors in math from fall and spring were compared with the qualitative analyses of these environments, students in supportive classrooms reported engaging in significantly less avoidance behavior than students in ambiguous or nonsupportive environments.

In this article, we focus particularly on the instructional contexts of classrooms. We discuss five interrelated questions: (a) How has classroom context been defined? (b) Why is classroom context important to study? (c) How have classroom and instructional contexts been studied? (d) What are the essential components for studying the instructional contexts of classrooms? (e) What are the future directions for the study of classroom contexts?The study of classroom contexts has a long history but has remained somewhat on the periphery in our discipline of educational psychology. Although most formal instruction takes place in classrooms, educational psychologists have tended to study educational outcomes and processes from the perspective of individual differences, as if students' membership in classrooms were irrelevant or "noise" in our data analyses. A quick glance at major journals in educational psychology reveals many more research articles focused on intrapsychological processes than on those interpersonal factors that may influence such processes. Similarly, we have a tradition in educational psychology of pursuing questions outside of classrooms or so-called authentic learning situations. We appear to want to isolate basic processes by controlling for other influences on student learning, motivation, and achievement. Classroom research is messy, but it is our contention in this article that it is precisely this error variance that needs to be explored.As we read the literature and attend conferences, we see a growing interest in the study of classroom contexts. Although there does not appear to be a common definition of context among researchers who use the term, there is a general increase in the willingness to experiment with a variety of methodologies that provide better answers to our increasingly more complex questions. In this article on classroom contexts, we revisit our past, discuss the present, and speculate about the future of classroom-based research in educational psychology. More specifically, we discuss five interrelated questions: (a) How has classroom context been defined? (b) Why is classroom context important to study? (c) How have classroom and instructional contexts been studied? (d) What are the essential components for studying the instructional contexts of classrooms? (e) What are future directions for the study of classroom contexts? HOW HAS CLASSROOM CONTEXT BEEN DEFINED?At first glance, the meaning of classroom context seems self-evident, but our search in the literature revealed almost as many definitions as studies. In most instances these definitions were implicit rather than explicit. One of the central areas of confusion is the use of classroom context to denote both the study of variables that contribute to understanding context and the specific research goal of studying context. In other words, there is research that attempts to understand the interrelations among the parts and there is research that focuses on the whole, which is defined as more than the sum of its par...