Interplay between personal goals and classroom goal structures in predicting student outcomes: A multilevel analysis of person-context interactions.

Abstract

This study examined cross-level interactions between personal goals and classroom goal structures, as well as their additive contributions to predicting math achievement, engagement, interest, effort withdrawal, and avoidance coping, using a sample of 3,943 Grade 5 students from 130 classrooms. Results of hierarchical linear modeling showed that classroom performance goal structures exacerbated (a) the negative association between personal performance-avoidance goals and engagement and (b) the positive relations of personal performance-avoidance goals to effort withdrawal and avoidance coping. Moreover, both classroom performance goal structures and personal performance-avoidance goals had maladaptive patterns of relations to outcomes at their respective levels of analysis, whereas classroom mastery goal structures and personal mastery goals showed adaptive relations. Our findings underscore the importance of a multilevel interactionist perspective in understanding achievement motivation and making recommendations for educational practices.

Do Students Distinguish Between Different Types of Performance Goals?

“…While our study failed to find supporting evidence for Grant and Dweck's (2003) proposal regarding multiple types of performance goals, the rest of the results are highly consistent with the existing literature. This study raises the possibility that salient characteristics of the learning environment might negate potentially important distinctions between achievement goals, including their valence (e.g., see Lau & Nie, 2008). We suggest that future research test whether the extremely high correlations among the performance goal components observed in the present study represent generalizable findings across heavily performance-oriented learning environments or culture-specific idiosyncrasies.…”

“…These perceptions also predict positive affect, greater effort and persistence, less help-seeking avoidance, and deeper cognitive engagement (Ames & Archer, 1988;Karabenick, 2004;Lau & Nie, 2008;Ryan, Gheen, & Midgley, 1998). On the basis of these findings, we hypothesized that perceptions of mastery goal structures in school would predict students' personal mastery goals as well as performance-approach goals focusing on nonnormative positive outcomes.…”

“…Perceptions of performance goal structures, in the form of perceived emphases on competition and relative ability, on the contrary, have been shown to escort students into adopting performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals. These perceptions predict detrimental motivational tendencies such as negative affect, cheating, greater use of self-handicapping strategies, and help-seeking avoidance (e.g., Ames & Archer, 1988;Anderman & Midgley, 2004;Lau & Nie, 2008;Ryan et al, 1998;Urdan, 2004). We thus hypothesized that perceptions of performance goal structures in school would predict students' personal performance-approach goals with a normative focus as well normative and nonnormative performance-avoidance goals.…”

Students’ Perceptions of the Goal Structure in Mathematics Classrooms: Relations with Goal Orientations, Mathematics Anxiety, and Help-Seeking Behavior

“…An interesting question for this study is if it is related to classroom goal structure, either directly or indirectly, through students' achievement goals. In a large scale study of fifth grade students in Singapore Lau and Nie (2008) found that a performance goal structure in mathematics classrooms positively predicted effort withdrawal and avoiding challenges in mathematics whereas a mastery goal structure negatively predicted these responses. A possible interpretation of these results is that a performance goal structure in mathematics classrooms increases mathematics anxiety among students.…”

Efecto de las metas de logro y las estructuras de metas de clase 3x2 en la motivación autodeterminada: un análisis multinivel en educación secundaria

“…Murayama and Elliot (2009) proposed a framework to assess the connections between CAF, AG and achievement results which included three models (direct effect, indirect effect and interaction effect). The direct effect model considers that the CAF influences the more relevant achievement results, even more than the personal AG (Ames & Archer, 1988;Gutman, 2006;Karabenick, 2004;Lau & Nie, 2008;Nolen, 2003;Turner et al, 2002;Urdan, Midgley, & Anderman, 1998;Wolters, 2004). The indirect effect model hypothesizes that the CAF influences indirectly the more relevant achievement results via its impact on the adoption of personal AG.…”