This study assessed the combined effects of students' achievement goal orientations (performance-approach goal and mastery-approach goal) and contextual factors (goal structures and task difficulty) on their performance. Researchers first asked 313 junior students about their achievement goal orientations and then randomly assigned them to one of…

This study evaluated the relations between adolescents' school and career future time perspective and their academic-related outcomes (i.e. grades, learning problems, and task orientation) and whether mastery goals are mediators of these relations. Romanian adolescents (N = 229, 59% girls) completed questionnaires assessing future orientation,…

This study reports on an investigation of the differences in results between students with special educational needs assigned to special classes or regular classes in lower secondary education. Cognitive competencies were measured using curricular Finnish and mathematics tasks, school achievement using grade point average (GPA), and learning…

Background: Within-class consensus on mastery goal structures describes the extent to which students agree in their perceptions of mastery goal structures. Research on (work) teams suggests that higher levels of consensus within a group indicate a well-functioning social environment and are thus positively related to beneficial socio-emotional…

Background: Previous prospective studies have documented that mastery-approach goals are adaptive because they facilitate less negative psychological responses to unfavourable social comparisons than performance-approach goals. Aims: This study aimed to confirm this so-called "mastery goal advantage" effect experimentally. Methods: A…

The current studies introduce the goal attainment expectancy construct to achievement goal theory. Three studies, 2 in college classrooms and the other using a novel math task in the laboratory, converged on the same finding. For mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals alike, the harder the goal appeared to attain, the less likely…

Thoughts drift in everyday life and in the classroom. The goal of this study was to investigate how often students reported off-task thinking while watching online lectures. These findings were related to working memory capacity, topic interest, and achievement goal orientations. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate how all of these…

In this study we examined change in students' situational interest as a function of student and task characteristics. Fifth- and sixth-graders (n = 52) were assigned to one of two task conditions that used a different version of a science simulation. The versions differed in how concrete vs. abstract the simulation elements were.…

The study of knowledge transfer rarely draws upon motivational constructs in empirical work. We investigated how students' achievement goals interact with different forms of instruction to promote "transfer," defined as preparation for future learning (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999) Students were given either invention or tell-and-practice activities…

Although the effects of achievement goals and working memory on academic performance are well established, it is not clear whether they jointly affect academic performance. Children from Primary 4 and 6 (N = 608) were administered (a) measures of working memory and updating from the automated working memory battery and a running span task, (b)…