The academically engaged life of mastery-oriented students: Causal ordering among positive emotions, mastery-approach goals, and academic engagement

Author(s):  
Jesus Alfonso D. Datu ◽  
Jana Patricia M. Valdez ◽  
Weipeng Yang
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 456-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesus Alfonso D. Datu ◽  
Nansook Park

Perceptions of kindness at school have been linked to a few positive psychological outcomes including optimism, happiness, life satisfaction, and social goals. However, limited evidence has been generated on how kindness relates to academic-related outcomes. This study explored the association of perceived school kindness with different domains of academic engagement. It also examined whether school kindness would have indirect effects on engagement outcomes via the intermediate variables – achievement goal orientations (i.e., mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals). Results showed that school kindness was positively correlated to agentic, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Bias-corrected bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that perceived school kindness had indirect effects on behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement via the intermediate variables, approach goals. While mastery-approach goals mediated the link between perceived school kindness and emotional engagement, performance-approach goals mediated the association of perceived school kindness with agentic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine S. Corker ◽  
Brent Donnellan

Boundary goals specify the minimum performance level that an individual must attain to subjectively experience success. The current research integrates boundary goals into the hierarchical model of achievement motivation (A. Elliot, 2006) by positing that boundary goals are a sub-goal in the goal hierarchy. We predicted that performance approach goals would be associated with higher boundary goals, whereas performance avoidance goals would be associated with lower boundary goals. We further predicted that boundary goals would mediate the association between achievement goals and performance, independent of other target goals (i.e., levels of aspiration). We also evaluated whether boundary goals served a similar role in explaining associations between mastery goals and performance. We tested these predictions by tracking the performance of 347 college students across the semester. As predicted, performance approach goals were positively associated with boundary goals (beta = .32) whereas performance avoidance goals were negatively associated with boundary goals (beta = -.11). Further, we found that mastery approach goals had positive associations with boundary goals (beta = .29) whereas the opposite pattern occurred for mastery avoidance goals (beta = -.25). Boundary goals were positively linked to exam scores (beta = .32) and mediated the associations between performance approach, mastery approach, and mastery avoidance goals and grades. These statistical effects were independent of the effects of level of aspiration. In short, boundary goals seem to play an important role in the achievement motivation process and may therefore serve as a potentially useful focus for interventions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxia Su ◽  
Ron E. McBride ◽  
Ping Xiang

The current study examined the measurement invariance across 361 male and female college students’ 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation and motivational regulations. Participants completed questionnaires assessing their achievement goals and motivational regulations. Multigroup CFA analyses showed that male and female students’ scores were fully invariant at the configural, metric, and scalar levels. Multigroup SEM analyses revealed that mastery-approach goals positively predicted intrinsic regulation and identified regulation. It also revealed that performance-approach goal was a stronger predictor of external regulation among female students than among male students. Collectively, these results provide evidence that researchers can make valid inferences about differences in achievement goal and self-regulation scores across male and female students. This study also supports the view that mastery-approach goals are motivationally beneficial, especially among female students, in college physical activity class settings.


Author(s):  
Stephanie V. Wormington ◽  
Erin Westgate ◽  
Aaron Call ◽  
Amelia Harati ◽  
Hannah Moshontz ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Chen

This study examined the role that achievement goals may play in predicting subjective well-being, particularly the extra contribution of achievement goals beyond that of personality traits. There were 371 university students from Nanjing, China (mean age = 20.67, SD = 1.30) who participated in the study and reported their achievement goals, the Big Five personality traits, and subjective well-being (including life satisfaction, positive, and negative affect). Results revealed that mastery-approach goals positively and significantly predicted life satisfaction; mastery-approach and performance-approach goals positively, whereas performance-avoidance goals negatively significantly predicted positive affect. When working with the Big Five personality traits, mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals showed their added contributions to life satisfaction and positive affect, respectively. These results highlight the importance of considering achievement goals when explaining individual differences of subjective well-being as well as the importance of taking subjective well-being into account when understanding the nature of achievement goals.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document