Types Of Goals Research Articles

Relations of Autonomy, Self-Referenced Beliefs, and Self-Regulated Learning among Japanese Children

This study was designed to investigate relations among autonomy, self-referenced beliefs, and self-regulated learning for 356 elementary school children (180 boys and 176 girls) from Grades 5 and 6. They were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to measure four types of motivation, self-esteem, strategy beliefs, capacity beliefs, control beliefs, and values, three types of goal orientations, and three types of learning strategies. Four types of motivation (external, introjected, identified, and intrinsic regulations) were shown to conform to a simplex structure or ordered correlational structure. Correlations among scores on autonomy (four kinds of regulation) and on self-regulated learning and between scores on self-referenced beliefs and on self-regulated learning were examined. Finally, canonical correlation was used to investigate the relations between autonomy and learning and between beliefs and learning. Implications of the findings for the relations were discussed.

Smart work and hard work: explicating a learning orientation in strategic management accounting

This paper examines the skills and aptitudes necessary to undertake a strategic management accounting project. It argues that individuals involved in such projects are required to work both smart and hard. This argument is developed theoretically by reference to the work of educational psychologists who have identified two different types of goal orientation which people pursue in achievement situations: the learning orientation and the performance orientation. Evidence that strategic management accounting requires a learning orientation is provided by means of a case study which describes its use in a competitive tendering situation. This is followed by a discussion of the potentially symbiotic relationship of strategic management accounting and organizational learning. The discussion leads to the specification of a research agenda that may have significant implications for the practice and learning of management accounting.

The impact of goal orientation on self‐regulation and performance among college students

The first objective of this study was to examine whether a relationship exists between types of goal orientation, self‐regulatory processes and school performance and the second was to examine how students' self‐regulation and academic performance differ according to their profiles resulting from combining learning and performance goals orientation. A total of 702 college students (463 females and 239 males) was administered a questionnaire assessing their orientation toward learning and performance goals, and reported their self‐regulatory strategies for studying. Results showed that both for males and females there exist systematic relations between learning goal and self‐regulation and academic achievement. Relations were also found for performance goal, but for boys only. Results also showed that, among the four profiles of goal orientation, more self‐regulatory strategies were reported and higher academic performance was achieved by students having high concern with both learning and performance goals than by the others. More girls were classified in this profile, but in each profile girls were found to report more self‐regulatory strategies and to achieve higher academic performance than did boys. Overall, these findings are consistent with those of previous studies conducted with younger students. Although adhesion to learning goal has a positive impact on self‐regulation both for girls and boys, for the latter adhesion to performance goal can also be helpful. In view of the role of goal orientation on self‐regulation in academic activities, research is needed to identify and understand the nature of the determinants of both the adhesion to these profiles and the gender differences.

Achievement goals in the classroom: Students' learning strategies and motivation processes.

We studied how specific motivational processes are related to the salience of mastery and performance goals in actual classroom settings. One hundred seventy-six students attending a junior high/high school for academically advanced students were randomly selected from one of their classes and responded to a questionnaire on their perceptions of the classroom goal orientation, use of effective learning strategies, task choices, attitudes, and causal attributions. Students who perceived an emphasis on mastery goals in the classroom reported using more effective strategies, preferred challenging tasks, had a more positive attitude toward the class, and had a stronger belief that success follows from one's effort. Students who perceived performance goals as salient tended to focus on their ability, evaluating their ability negatively and attributing failure to lack of ability. The pattern and strength of the findings suggest that the classroom goal orientation may facilitate the maintenance of adaptive motivation patterns when mastery goals are salient and are adopted by students. Recent research on achievement motivation has focused on identifying different types of goal orientations among students, the motivational processes that are associated with these different goals, and the conditions that elicit them. These goal orientations have been contrasted as task involved versus ego involved (Maehr, 1983; Maehr & Nicholls, 1980; Nicholls, 1979, 1984; see also deCharms, 1968, 1976), as learning oriented versus performance oriented (Dweck, 1986, 1988; Dweck & Elliott, 1984), and as mastery focused versus ability focused (Ames, 1984a; Ames & Ames, 1984). Because the conceptual relations among task, learning, and mastery goals and among ego, performance, and ability goals are convergent, these perspectives have been integrated and are hereafter identified as mastery and performance goals, respectively (cf.