In this study, we examined the longitudinal reciprocal relationships among mastery goals, autonomous motivation, and motivation instability. In the hierarchical model of motivation, mastery goal for overall course subject learning has been positioned at the contextual level, while autonomous motivation and motivation instability during a specific…

Research on effective teaching and learning shows that when students set and monitor their own learning goals, it significantly narrows achievement gaps. While teacher-written objectives are important for clarity, when these objectives are re-written as personal statements, they evolve from what a teacher needs to teach to what students want to…

Background: Individual achievement goals are influenced by the learning context, such as the classroom. In this social space, social norms emerge and shape motivation and behaviour. Classroom goal structures reflect injunctive norms (what is considered acceptable) and influence individual achievement goals. The role that descriptive norms (what…

Background: Research on the predictors of mastery-approach goals has focused primarily on the role of internal psychological and teacher-related factors. However, the role of one's peers, specifically peer cooperation and competition, has seldom been explored. Aims: Peer cooperation and competition could be studied at either the individual- or…

Background: Academic achievement goals are important for student outcomes, including their well-being, collaboration with peers, and academic achievement. Theory and research also indicate that achievement goals are linked to students' social context, playing a role in forming and maintaining peer relationships within the school environment. Aims:…

Background: Socio-economic status is one of the most important factors shaping students' motivation and achievement but has seldom been explored in relation to achievement goals. Aims: This study aimed to investigate whether mastery-approach goals explain the link between SES and key learning-related outcomes ("mediation") and whether…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Guided by the content specificity perspective of motivation, the purpose of the study was to identify the extent to which student motivation level is a function of content variations. Motivation intervention studies were reviewed and categorized into content-focused and motivation-only learning contexts for meta-analysis. Original and calculated…

Higher education students utilize Open AI tools such as ChatGPT as learning aids when confronted with academic challenges during their learning journey. Prior work has established that adaptive and maladaptive forms of academic help-seeking are closely related to achievement goals, which could lead to different patterns of using ChatGPT as a…

Chemistry is often daunting for college students, contributing to high attrition rates in STEM majors. This study explored students' perceptions of the challenges in studying chemistry, including task effort and emotional costs. We examined how these perceptions, along with goal approaches, impact academic performance and retention in general…

Research has demonstrated that compared to mastery-approach goals (i.e., trying to develop a mental ability), performance-approach goals (i.e., trying to outperform others) elicit higher metacognitive judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs). However, the underlying mechanism of the effects of achievement goals on JOLs remains unclear.…

Guided by an affective theoretical process, we surveyed college students (N = 397) to examine the effect of college instructors' lecture misbehaviors on students' emotional interest directly, and indirectly through affect toward the course content, among students who varied in their desire to master the course material (i.e., first- and…

This study explores structural relations among learning environment, achievement goals and reading achievement in China. The sample contains 12,058 Chinese students from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 study. Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (Multilevel SEM) is used for data analysis. The results indicate that…

Students' perception of teachers' mindset beliefs (TMB) is associated with their school engagement (SSE). Based on SSE's contextual-personal interplay, perceived classroom goal structures (CGS) and students' mindset beliefs (SMB) were considered. Data from 1071 high school students were analyzed. The results show that CGS significantly mediated…