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WEEK 11 Lectrue 21

The document discusses how goals are important for learning as they guide effort, attention, planning, and responses to failure. It outlines that mastery goals, which focus on increasing competence, tend to support better long-term learning compared to performance goals, which focus on appearing skilled relative to others. However, research on the impact of performance goals has yielded mixed findings, with some studies finding benefits when learners endorse normative goals or that goals operate through mediating factors like self-efficacy.

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Malik Junaid
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53 views

WEEK 11 Lectrue 21

The document discusses how goals are important for learning as they guide effort, attention, planning, and responses to failure. It outlines that mastery goals, which focus on increasing competence, tend to support better long-term learning compared to performance goals, which focus on appearing skilled relative to others. However, research on the impact of performance goals has yielded mixed findings, with some studies finding benefits when learners endorse normative goals or that goals operate through mediating factors like self-efficacy.

Uploaded by

Malik Junaid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Motivation to learn

Week 11 class 23
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS

• Goals—the learner’s desired outcomes


• are important for learning because they promote behaviors important
for learning such as:

1. guide decisions about whether to expend effort


2. how to direct attention
3. foster planning
4. influence responses to failure
Learner’s consciousness
• Learners may not always be conscious of their goals or of the
motivation processes that relate to their goals.
• For example:

Activities that learners perceive


as threatening to their sense of
Activities that learners perceive competence or self-esteem may
as enjoyable or interesting can reduce learners’ motivation and
foster engagement without the performance even (and
learner’s conscious awareness. sometimes especially) when
they intend to perform well.
Having clear and specific goals that are challenging but manageable has a
positive effect on performance, and researchers have proposed explanations.

Some have focused on goals as motives or reasons to learn (Ames and Ames,
1984; Dweck and Elliott, 1983; Locke et al., 1981; Maehr, 1984; Nicholls, 1984).

Others have noted that different types of goals, such as mastery and
performance goals, have different effects on the cognitive, affective, and
behavioral processes that underlie learning as well as on learners’ outcomes
(Ames and Archer, 1988; Covington, 2000; Dweck, 1986).

Research has also linked learners’ beliefs about learning and achievement, or
mindsets, with students’ pursuit of specific types of learning goals (Maehr and
Zusho, 2009).
Types of Goals
Performance goals: learners are Mastery goals: learners focus
driven by a desire to appear on increasing competence or
competent or outperform others understanding

performance-approach: self-presentation goals:


performance-avoidance: wanting others to think
learners seek to appear
Learners work to avoid you are smart
more competent than
looking incompetent or
others and to be judged
being embarrassed or Normative goals:
socially in a favorable
judged as a failure wanting to outperform
light
others
Research on types of goals

• Learners may simultaneously pursue multiple goals and, depending on the


subject area or skill domain, may adopt different achievement goals.

• Although students’ achievement goals are relatively stable across the school
years, they are sensitive to changes in the learning environment, such as moving
from one classroom to another or changing schools.

• Learning environments differ in the learning expectations, rules, and structure


that apply, and as a result, students may shift their goal orientation to succeed in
the new context.
Achievement goals reflect learners’ underlying theories of the nature of
intelligence or ability
fixed or malleable

1. Learners who believe intelligence is fixed: tend to orient toward


displaying competence and adopting performance goals
2. Learners who believe intelligence is malleable: are predisposed
toward adopting mastery goals
Learners with mastery goals

• Learners who strongly endorse mastery goals tend to enjoy novel and
challenging tasks, demonstrate a greater willingness to expend
effort, and engage higher-order cognitive skills during Learning.

• Mastery students are also persistent—even in the face of failure—and


frequently use failure as an opportunity to seek feedback and improve
subsequent performance.
• Learners’ mastery and performance goals may also influence learning
and achievement through indirect effects on cognition.

• Specifically, learners with mastery goals tend to focus on relating new


information to existing knowledge as they learn, which supports
deep learning and long-term memory for the information.
Learners with performance goals
• By contrast, learners with performance goals tend to focus on
learning individual bits of information separately, which improves
speed of learning and immediate recall but may undermine
conceptual learning and long-term recall.
Comparison of learners with performance and
mastery goals

Performance goals tend to Mastery goals tend to


support better immediate support better
retrieval of information long-term retention
Comparison of learners with performance and
mastery goals

When learners with mastery


When learners with
goals work to recall a previously
performance goals try to recall
learned piece of information,
what they learned, they do not
they also activate and
get the benefit of this retrieval-
strengthen memory for the
induced strengthening of their
other, related information they
memory for other information
learned.
Two studies with undergraduate students
• Study participants who adopted performance goals were found to be
concerned with communicating competence, prioritizing areas of
high ability, and avoiding challenging tasks or areas in which they
perceived themselves to be weaker than others.
• These students perceived failure as a reflection of their inability and
typically responded to failure with frustration, shame, and anxiety.
• These kinds of performance avoidance goals have been associated
with maladaptive learning behaviors including task avoidance,
reduced effort, and self-handicapping.
SO conclusion the seems plausible here is:

• The adoption of a mastery goal orientation to learning is


likely to be beneficial for learning

• Pursuit of performance goals is associated with poor


learning-related outcomes
However,
research regarding the impact of performance goals on academic
outcomes has yielded mixed findings

1. Some researchers have found positive outcomes when learners


have endorsed normative goals (a type of performance goal)

2. Others have found that achievement goals do not have a direct effect
on academic achievement but operate instead through the
intermediary learning behaviors through self-efficacy
Assigned reading for students
• Influence of teachers on learners’ goals
• Learning goals and other goals

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