The article is by Carole Ames and Jennifer Archer and is titled "Achievement Goals in the Classroom: Students' Learning Strategies and Motivation Processes".

 

This article is about a study done on students' insight towards learning strategies, challenging tasks, their attitude towards class, and their beliefs about the causes of success and failure. Findings from the study showed the students who possessed mastery goal orientation preferred using more learning strategies, wanted tasks that offered challenges, and have a positive attitude towards their class. Students that preferred performance goal orientation did not possess any particular learning strategy and usually attached failure to their sense of lack of ability and to the difficulty of their work. The following is a table from the article summarized in the above text. This table provides information from the mastery oriented perspective of students and the performance goal perspective.

 

Table 1

Achievement Goal Analysis of Classroom Climate

Climate dimensions                          Mastery goal                                                     Performance goal    

Success defined as...                          Improvement, progress                                  High grades, high normative performance

Value placed on...                               Effort/learning                                  Normatively high ability

Reasons for satisfaction...               Working hard, challenge               Doing better than others

Teacher oriented toward...                How students are learning             How students are performing

View of errors/mistakes...                Part of learning                                 Anxiety eliciting

Focus of attention...                          Process of learning                          Own performance relative to others'

Reasons for effort...                                             Learning something new               High grades, performing better than others

Evaluation criteria...                          Absolute, progress                          Normative               

 

This table can be found at the following web address:

http://homepages.utoledo.edu/kpugh/motivation_project/resources/ames_archer88.pdf

 

 

This article describes a study that looked at how specific motivation patterns related to mastery and performance goals in the classroom. The researchers gave a survey questionnaire to 176 students in grades 8 through 11 in an academically advanced school. Students were asked about their goal orientation, learning strategies, task challenge, attitude toward class, causal attribution and perceive ability. The researchers then compared their scores on mastery and performance goal orientation scales to learning strategy, task choice, attitude, and attribution measures.

 

Results found that strategies the students used correlated with their perceived structure of the classroom, and that mastery and performance goals were independent dimensions. When the students perceived the learning environment to focus on mastery tasks, then they focused more on their learning strategies, performing challenging tasks, and had a positive attitude. They also tended to credit the teacher when they showed a good performance, and did not blame the teacher when they performed poorly.

 

The main findings from this article illustrate that performance or mastery goal orientation for the students hinges on their perceptions of the learning environment. Students utilize the learning tools they need based on the type of learning and performance emphasized in the classroom. Goal orientation correlated with students approach to the classroom and learning.