Purpose: Professional training courses play an important role for higher education instructors and their teaching quality. However, participants strongly differ in how much they learn in these courses. The present study seeks to explain these differences by focusing on attention as a central aspect of their behavioral engagement that can stem from participants' achievement motivations. Design/methodology/approach: The authors investigated the attention of participants in full-day higher education professional training courses and how differences therein are associated with their achievement goals. Prior to course participation, 117 university instructors (49.6% male, 79.5% with PhD, average age 31.4 years) reported their achievement goals. Using an adapted observational instrument (Hommel, 2012a), two raters subsequently observed and coded the participants' attention during the course (ICC2 = 0.83). Findings: The results documented very high attention levels, although with substantial interindividual differences. Multilevel analyses indicated that learning goals positively and work avoidance goals negatively predicted observed attention. Originality/value: The findings provide insight into the value of an observational approach to measuring a fundamental aspect of learning engagement, and contribute to the understanding of interindividual differences in an important higher education learning environment. The study illuminates the relevance of personal predictors for university instructors' successful learning. Specifically, the findings point to the significance of goals as a relevant, but surprisingly hitherto uninvestigated, premise of learning engagement.