Preservice teachers can be considered simultaneously students and teachers and therefore likely have both academic and professional goals. However, once in a professional program, predicting professional outcomes becomes somewhat more important than academic ones. This distinction may have implications for the selection of measurement tools used…

This goal of this study was to develop a quantitative measure that captures the dimensions of youth purpose (intention, engagement, and prosocial reasoning; Damon, Menon, and Bronk, 2003), focusing on students' life goals and aspirations. We tested the construct validity of our new measure using bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (B…

Work avoidance, or the goal to reduce effort in an achievement context, is related to disengagement and may offer insight into disengaged students and employees. To shed light on this issue, we investigated the antecedents of work avoidance in academic and work contexts to distinguish it from mastery, performance-approach, and…

This study measured aspects of the couple relationship to examine direct and indirect relations with parental involvement in education and children's school outcomes. The sample (n = 100) consisted of families that have at least one child between the ages of 8 and 11 in urban central Taiwan. Findings indicated that couple relationship quality is…

This study was designed to forge stronger theoretical and empirical links between achievement goal theory and attribution theory. High school students ("N" = 224) completed a self-report survey that assessed 3 types of achievement goals, 7 types of attributions, and self-efficacy. Results indicated that students' adoption of achievement…

The focus of this study is on the role of achievement goals in students' persistence. The authors administered 5 puzzles to 96 college students: 4 unsolvable and 1 relatively easy (acting as a hope probe). They examined whether and how persistence may deteriorate as a function of failing the puzzles, as well as whether and how persistence may…

The present studies aimed to reexamine college students' achievement goal orientations by situating their motivation in a cooperative learning context. The authors proposed and validated a scale of 3 levels of trichotomous achievement goal orientations. In Study 1, confirmatory factor analyses supported that, in laboratory cooperative learning…

The authors examined the relationships among achievement motives, emotional regulation, and emotions. They collected data from 425 college undergraduates (110 men, 315 women) and used several scales, including the Achievement Motives Scales (K. Hagtvet & L. Zou, 2000), the Emotional Regulation During Testing Scale (P. A. Schutz, C. DiStefano,…

On the basis of an integrated theoretical approach to achievement motivation, the authors designed this study to investigate the potential influence of mastery goal, performance-approach and avoidance-approach goals, individual interest, and situational interest on students' learning in a physical education softball unit. The authors collected and…

Using M. L. Maehr's (1984) theory of personal investment, the authors investigated associations among perceived peer relationships and achievement motivation during science class. Middle school and high school students (N = 253) completed a self-report questionnaire assessing peer classroom climate, achievement-related beliefs and values of a best…

Studied the relevance and significance of goal-orientation theories to 158 high-ability, high-achieving adolescents in summer programs for the gifted. Results show that these adolescents were not free of ego concerns, including fear of failure and of not living up to expectations of peers and teachers, and that ego orientations may be more…

Both expectancy-theory and needs-theory variables were used to predict college student performance (overall grade point average) for 81 students. The average valence variable from the expectancy theory model was found to be the best overall predictor of actual academic performance, but the need for autonomy score was also a predictor. (SLD)

The authors investigated the effects of former learning experiences on how students adapt to challenging mathematics tasks. A distinction has been made between domain-specific variables (goal orientation, self-concept of mathematics ability) and task- (or context-) specific appraisals (estimated competence for, attractiveness and relevance of the…