What are Achievement Goals?

Methods of motivation and goals play a significant part in academic development. Research suggests that only 25% of the variability in children’s achievement outcomes can be accounted for by their scores on tests of intelligence (Neisser et al., 1996). “A likely source of some of the additional variability is the specific achievement-related beliefs that children bring to the learning context: How talented am I in science? Am I am poor reader because I’m not trying hard enough, or am I just not very smart? How well do I want to perform in math and how hard will I strive to meet this standard? Indeed, considerable empirical evidence exists to support the claim that children’s beliefs about their intellectual competencies and views about the importance of school success have a powerful impact on academic behaviors and outcomes” (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998).  

 Achievement goals are competence-based aims that individuals create as means to take action they are motivated to pursue.  Individuals typically have motives for their actions, so we can thus analyze goals from an orientation point of view. An important distinction in achievement goal literature is the difference between performance and mastery goals. We can differentiate between people's reasons for doing well as either ego or task related. Specifically, task (mastery) goals reflect perceived competence in terms of task mastery or evaluative standards. In this approach, individuals are learning for its own sake. Meanwhile, Ego-related (performance) goals reflect performance relative to the performance of others. A performance goal orientation is characterized by questions such as "Can I do better than others?" or "Will I look smart?"

On the other hand, a student with a learning goal orientation would more likely ask questions like "Can I improve my knowledge on this subject?" or "How can I do this task?"Studies within the achievement goal theory show that the pursuit of mastery goals was associated with various positive outcomes, including intrinsic motivation, self-regulated learning, and deep-level learning, whereas performance goals were found to be positively related to surface processing but unrelated or negatively to deep-level processing or self-regulated learning.

 Performance goals were found to predict academic performance in some research, but other studies failed to confirm these findings. As a result of conflicting data, further divisions in goals were created to include the idea of mastery approach goals (MAp), mastery avoidance goals (MAv), performance approach goals (PAp), and performance avoidance (PAv) goals. The rationale was that competence can be valued as a positive outcome to be achieved or incompetence can be valued as a negative outcome to be avoided.

 PAp goals are believed to yield positive effects, especially on achievement, because the external focus that characterizes these goals leads people to select strategic study strategies that yield high achievement. In contrast, PAv goals hinder learning and achievement, because the concern for failure is likely to disrupt the learning process, undermine the pleasure of learning and achievement, and result in low performance. Mastery goals appear to be primarily predictive of achievement that reflects deep learning.

This chart below provides a basic representation of the distinctions:

Achievement goal theory continues with autonomous and controlling goals and further subsets of goals. This desired to look at goals from "why" rather than the "what". 

Since its development, significant contributions have been made to the research and practice in education and psychology. Achievement goal theory has provided an influential framework for conceptualizing student motivation. Though complex, analyzing goals and people's intentions for their actions can allow for greater insight into motivation, learning, and achievement.