Context-specific achievement goal orientations in cooperative group work

Abstract

This study explored how trichotomous achievement goal orientations in each of three contexts (i.e., individual, individual-within-a-group, and group; Kim, Kim, & Svinicki, 2012) play different roles in predicting college students' enjoyment, sense of group community, and evaluation of group work processes during laboratory cooperative group work. We asked 174 undergraduate students to complete individual and group-related achievement goal orientation measures before and after participating in group work. The results indicated that individual and group-related achievement goal orientations in a cooperative group work setting strongly predicted the affective and cognitive variables and that these associations varied among the goals. For example, both individual-within-a-group performance-approach goal orientations and group performance-approach goal orientations were positively associated with the related affective and cognitive variables, whereas individual performance-approach goal orientations were negatively associated with those variables. Implications for current achievement goal orientation theory in a cooperative group work context are discussed.