Achievement Goal Orientations

In this chapter, we describe the principles of a person-oriented approach to studying individual differences (and similarities), and how it can be applied to the study of students’ achievement goal orientations. First, we briefly illustrate the approach, which provides a way of looking at the relative emphasis of different achievement goal orientations, thereby explicitly addressing the issue of multiple goals and their associations with important outcomes. Second, we give a comprehensive review of studies that have applied such an approach to investigating students’ achievement goals. The diversity in conceptualizations, methods, and study samples in the studies complicates the interpretation of the findings, but some generalizations can nevertheless be made. Based on the review, we conclude that students with qualitatively different achievement goal orientation profiles can clearly be identified, and that the extracted profiles are rather similar across studies. Further, it seems that such profiles are relatively stable over time and meaningfully associated with learning and various educational outcomes (e.g., academic achievement, self-perceptions, well-being, task-related motivation, and performance). The review also contributes to the debate concerning the advantages of endorsing different goals. Finally, we raise some methodological concerns, discuss implications for learning, and provide suggestions for future research. ACHIEVEMENT GOAL ORIENTATIONS 3 Achievement Goal Orientations: A Person-Oriented Approach In this chapter, we will explore a way of studying motivation that focuses on the profiles of students’ preferred goals and related outcomes in achievement contexts. We argue that taking into account the relative emphasis of different goals or goal orientations provides us with valuable information about individual differences in motivation and how those differences are associated with various academic and personal outcomes. This so-called person-oriented approach is well suited for the study of group and individual differences within and over time, as it is predicated on the assumption that the population is heterogeneous with respect to the patterns of variables. Variables are considered less as agents and outcomes and more as properties of individual and their environment (Laursen & Hoff, 2006). In the following, we will first briefly describe and illustrate the person-oriented approach, after which we will review a body of research that has applied such an approach to investigating students’ achievement goals and goal orientations. What Is a Person-Oriented Approach? Often when we refer to motivation in everyday discussions, we tend to describe individuals or groups of individuals: “he was not motivated to do the task”, “she has always displayed immense interest in mathematics”, “the team clearly lacked confidence”, and so on. Yet, in research, we are inclined to discuss about the constructs: interest seems to predict course choices, anxiety interferes with task performance, confidence contributes to achievement above and beyond intelligence. This is rather natural, since in research, we are mostly interested in the constructs that describe and refer to the psychological phenomena we believe to represent the various aspects of motivation. Most studies are designed correspondingly: we measure different types of variables and then link those variables to each other through correlations and regressions. Such an approach can be labelled as variableoriented. Within this approach, models and hypotheses are formulated in terms of variables ACHIEVEMENT GOAL ORIENTATIONS 4 and variable relations, use statistical methods that focus on variable relations, and treat variables as the main units of analysis (Bergman & Magnusson, 1997). For example, we could hypothesize that two independent facets of perfectionism (Stoeber & Otto, 2006), goal level and discrepancy (i.e., perceived dissatisfaction with goal attainment), differently predict task performance. Accordingly, we would conduct a study where we first measure participants along the two measures of perfectionism, have them then perform a task, and, finally, regress the performance scores on the measures of perfectionism. The obtained regression coefficients would thus inform us about the extent to which change in one facet independently predicts the change in task performance. Alternatively, we could also focus more on the individuals instead of variables, and hypothesize that there are groups of individuals that are similar to each other, but differ from the others in terms of the level of the facets of perfectionism. For example, some may set high goals and be satisfied with their attainments, some may set high goals and be unsatisfied with their attainment, and yet some may set low goals and still be satisfied with their attainments. These three different groups might then also differ in their task performance. Thus, instead of examining relations among variables within a sample, we would be more interested in examining the heterogeneity of the sample across variables. In practice, we would first group the participants according to their perfectionism profiles, and then examine group differences on task performance. Through this, we would gain information about how people with different perfectionism profiles succeeded in the task. This approach can be labelled as person-oriented. Within this approach, the focus is on score profiles across the variables instead of variables as such. Models and hypotheses are formulated in terms of individuals and variable configurations, and statistical methods that focus on individuals and groups of individuals are used. We can thus differently approach the same targets of interest with different ACHIEVEMENT GOAL ORIENTATIONS 5 implications for the potential outcomes. Although there is no clear consensus on the terms variable-oriented and person-oriented (Bergman & Trost, 2006), the difference between these approaches is not just the methods used. There are theoretical implications as well that are mostly shared by the different views. The person-oriented approach is often linked to the holistic-interactionistic paradigm introduced by Magnusson (1988) and further developed by Bergman and Magnusson (1997), which views the individual as an active agent in the personenvironment system. Its core tenets suggest that there is lawfulness and structure both in intra-individual constancy and change and in inter-individual differences in constancy and change, that this lawfulness and structure can be described as patterns of the involved factors, and that some patterns occur more frequently, some others less frequently than expected, based on theory (see von Eye & Bogat, 2006). Consider, for instance, our example of perfectionism above. Perfectionistic strivings refer to individual tendencies to set high standards and simultaneously to critically evaluate personal achievements in relation to those standards. This implies that a person with extreme levels in both facets – who strives for high goals, but is seldom satisfied with the outcomes – can be considered as a perfectionist. However, as those facets of perfectionism tend to be empirically uncorrelated, people are likely to display different combinations of the two: they may be high or low in both, neither or just one of them. Indeed, empirical studies demonstrates this to be the case (Rice & Slaney, 2002). In addition to describing similarities and differences across individuals and groups of individuals, person-oriented approach is also well suited for analyzing development and change over time. Here, the interest is more in the stability and change of the patterning of variables rather than in the stability of variables as such. For example, instead of examining stability coefficients and changes in mean levels of the facets of perfectionism, one would investigate whether the same number of groups were identified in different measurement ACHIEVEMENT GOAL ORIENTATIONS 6 points, whether the identified profiles were similar over time, and the extent to which members in each group remained in the same group. The patterning of the groupings and membership frequencies could then be analyzed using cross-tabulations or configural frequency analysis (CFA; von Eye, 1990). Stability is present if similar profiles and groups are identified at the different measurement points and if members are likely to stay in similar groups over time. In contrast, qualitative shifts (i.e., changes in individuals’ profiles) are present if people move from one group to another. To summarize, in some cases, score or variable profiles may be a theoretically more appropriate and empirically more accurate way of describing certain phenomena than simple scores or variables, and the examination of score configurations may be more informative than the analyses of variable relationships. A person-oriented approach may thus provide us with a view that goes beyond mere variable relationships, and inform us more thoroughly about the similarities and differences between and within individuals and groups of individuals. However, it is important that the given theoretical stance both justifies the approach and provides substantive grounds for interpreting the results. As it is always possible to identify profiles or form groups in the data, any solutions derived from such person-oriented analyses need to be meaningful in relation to the underlying theoretical framework. Naturally, variableand person-oriented approaches should not be taken as methodological rivals, but rather as complementary approaches with different foci (see Niemivirta, 2002a). In the remaining parts of the chapter, we will first describe how such a personoriented approach can be applied to the study of differences (and similarities) in how students’ orient themselves to learning and performance in achievement settings, and then review a set o