Chart on article

“Should Childhood Be a Journey or a Race? Response to Harackiewicz et at. (2002)”

In the past, the achievement goal theory has supported the general statement that mastery goals are always good and performance goals are always bad. In this article, the authors present research that was completed on performance-approach goals to see if this statement was true or if both could be valuable. This chart compares the two goal types and considers certain factors that contribute to each. The article does believe that after looking at these findings, there is potential value to performance-approach goals but not enough to change the statement to say that mastery goals are always good and performance goals are always good.

Factors:	Performance-Approach Goals	Mastery Goals
Positive Outcomes	-achievement -task value -effort -grades -academic efficiency -extrinsic rewards	-meaningful learning -retention -critical thinking -intrinsic rewards
Context for Best Results	Competitive learning environment	Open learning environment
Characteristics	-older students -high ability	-younger students -interest in the subject
Downsides	-possible adoption of performance avoidance	-will not gain competitive edge that school and world gages as success