No abstract

It was proposed that achievement goal theory can be applied to conceptualizing motivation not only for learning but also for teaching. As predicted, responses of 320 teachers to a new self-report measure of goal orientations for teaching yielded 4 factors reflecting distinct mastery, ability-approach, abilityavoidance, and work-avoidance goals. Data from 212 teachers who also completed measures of help seeking confirmed that mastery goals predicted positive perceptions of help seeking, preferences for receiving autonomous help, and frequency of help seeking; ability avoidance predicted negative perceptions and help avoidance; and work avoidance predicted expedient help seeking. Results validate the proposed structure and measure of teacher goal orientations and open new directions for research on teacher cognitions and behaviors, teachers' influences on students, and school influences on teachers.

I designed this study to test the hypothesis that the impact of information about performance on subsequent intrinsic motivation depends significantly on the degree to which this information promotes a task-involved or an ego-involved motivational orientation. A total of 200 fifth-and sixth-grade students with high or low school achievement were given interesting divergent thinking tasks in each of three sessions. Individual comments, numerical grades, standardized praise, or no feedback were received after Sessions 1 and 2. Results confirmed that at Session 3 (posttest), interest, performance, and attributions of effort, outcome, and the impact of evaluation to taskinvolved causes were highest at both levels of achievement after receipt of comments. Egoinvolved attributions were highest after receipt of grades and praise. These findings support the conceptualization of the feedback conditions as task involving (comments), ego involving (grades and praise), or neither (no feedback). The similar impact of grades and praise would not be predicted by cognitive evaluation theory. I discuss the importance of distinguishing between taskand ego-involved orientations in the study of continuing motivation.

No abstract

SIIWIARY. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that intrinsic motivation will be differentially affected by task-involving and ego-involving evaluation, and that provision of both kinds of evaluation will promote ego-involvement rather than task-involvement. Twelve classes of fifth and sixth grade pupils were randomly assigned to one of three feedback conditions. Pupils received either ego-involving numerical grades or taskinvolving individual comments or both after performing interesting tasks, one convergent and one divergent, on each of two sessions. Interest and performance for 132 randomly selected pupils of high or low school achievement were measured at pre-test, during the manipulation and at a third session, when no further evaluation was anticipated. As hypothesised, interest and performance on both tasks at both levels of school achievement were highest after comments, both when further comments were anticipated and when they were not. Grades and grades plus comments had similar and generally undermining effects on both interest and performance, although high achievers who received grades maintained high interest and convergent thinking when further grades were anticipated. These results are discussed in terms of the contribution of this distinction between task and ego-involvement to further understanding of intrinsically motivated activity. INTRODUCTIONRECENT research on intrinsic motivation has consistently found that rewards undermine subsequent interest for initially attractive tasks, apparently by promoting attributions of task engagement to the reward rather than to pleasure in the activity itself (see recent reviews by Lepper, 1983;Morgan, 1984). However, less attention has been directed to clarifying how initial interest can be maintained, or possibly even enhanced. Cognitive evaluation theory (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1980) maintains that interest will not be undermined by rewards which are perceived as providing positive information about competence rat her than as sources of control. However, Harackiewicz, et al. (1984) note that this prediction has not received consistent empirical support and suggest that this may be because the mechanism by which positive information is supposed to enhance interest remains unclear.Similar concerns have been expressed by several researchers who argue that theories which focus primarily on the implications of exogenous perceptions of causality for task resumption have shed little light o n the ways in which the experience and process of task engagement may differ under intrinsic or extrinsic conditions (Csziksentmihalyi, 1975;Maehr, 1976, Condry, 1977deCharms, 1983 Greene and Lepper, 1974) suggested that rewards may undermine creative or divergent thinking, these findings seemed compatible with general behaviour theory and had little impact o n conceptualisations of intrinsic motivation. Moreover, later studies tended to find that performance was largely unrelated either to the presence or absence of rewards or to increases or decreases in subs...

Two studies were designed to extend Butler's (2007) model and measure of achievement goals for teaching, to recognize that teaching is an interpersonal endeavor, not just personal endeavor. In Study 1, results from 530 teachers in Israel confirmed the predicted 5-factor model comprising relational goals, whereby teachers aspire to create close and caring relationships with students, in addition to the previously identified mastery, ability-approach, ability-avoidance, and work avoidance goals for teaching. Results from a subsample of 272 teachers confirmed that the teachers' goals were coherently and differentially related to their teaching practices, assessed several months later. The most important results showed that only relational goals predicted teacher social support; they also predicted mastery instruction. Teacher ability-approach and ability-avoidance goals both predicted performance instructional practices. Multilevel analyses of data from 73 teacher–class pairs (1,790 students) in Study 2 showed that teacher relational goals also predicted student reports of teacher social support and mastery instruction; mastery goals were negatively associated with student perceptions of performance practices. Teachers' goals, but not teachers' reports of instruction, predicted students' perceptions of instruction. The results supported extension of Butler's model to incorporate relational goals for teaching and confirmed that strivings to connect are at the heart of effective teaching. The results also shed new light on relations between teachers' goals and teachers' approaches to instruction and on teacher and student perspectives on instruction. Differences in boys' and girls' perceptions of instruction imply that it is important to consider possible gender differences in research on classroom goal structures.

No abstract

Integrating developments in social comparison and achievement theories suggested that ability goals will promote ability-appraisal and self-serving functions of social comparison and that mastery goals will enhance interest in social comparisons that can promote learning. A novel design let Ss choose between different kinds of social information. Seventy-eight Israeli 6th graders performed a task in a mastery or ability goal condition and then examined tables providing social information relevant to learning about the task, to normative ability assessment, or to identifying their personal style. As predicted, mastery Ss spent longer at the task table than ability Ss, who spent longer at the normative table, especially if they had performed well. Goal conditions also affected relations between time at the normative table and perceived competence and interest in the task. Implications of this framework and methodology for social comparison theory are discussed.