Changes in the perceived classroom goal structure and pattern of adaptive learning during early adolescence

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Abstract

Despite a recent increase in research on the associations between classroom goal structures, motivation, affect, and achievement, little is known about the effects of changes in the perceived classroom goal structure as students move from one grade level to another. Comparisons of students who perceived an increase, decrease, or no change in the mastery and performance goal structures of their classrooms during the transition to middle school and across two grades within middle school revealed that changes in the mastery goal structure were more strongly related to changes in cognition, affect, and performance than were changes in the performance goal structure. The most negative pattern of change was associated with a perceived decrease in the mastery goal structure.

Introduction

Considerable research has documented a decline in academic motivation and performance for many students during early adolescence (see Eccles (Parsons), Midgley, & Adler, 1984 for a review). Some have suggested that these negative patterns are related to physiological and psychological changes associated with puberty and are inevitable. Recent research suggests that the move to middle level schools contributes to these declines. When students move to middle level schools, they may encounter a learning environment that is less facilitative of motivation and learning than the environment they experienced in elementary school (Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Eccles et al., 1993).

Recently, goal orientation theory has provided a lens through which to view the relation between the learning environment and early adolescent development (e.g., Maehr & Anderman, 1993; Midgley, 1993). This theory was developed within a social-cognitive framework that focuses on the aims or purposes that are pursued or perceived in an achievement setting (e.g., Maehr, 1989; Nicholls, 1989). Goals provide a framework within which individuals interpret and react to events, and result in different patterns of cognition, affect, and behavior (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Theorists have described two achievement goals in particular: the goal to develop ability (variously labeled a mastery goal, task goal, or learning goal), and the goal to demonstrate ability or to avoid the demonstration of lack of ability (variously labeled a performance goal, ego goal, or ability goal).

Research examining the effects of personal mastery and performance goals has often found a more consistent, and stronger, pattern of relationships between mastery goals and cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes than between performance goals and these outcomes (for reviews see Elliot, 1997; Harackiewicz, Barron, Carter, Lehto, & Elliot, 1997; Midgley, 1993; Urdan, 1997a). For example, Urdan (1997b) found that the correlations between both positive and negative orientations of friends and a mastery goal orientation were stronger than the correlations between friends’ orientations and performance goals. Kaplan and Midgley (1997) found that mastery goals were moderately correlated with perceived competence in both mathematics and English whereas performance goals were unrelated to perceived competence in either domain. Nicholls, Patashnick, and Nolen (1985) found moderate, positive correlations between personal task (mastery) goals and satisfaction with learning, college plans, and perceived ability but weak or null relationships between personal ego-social (performance) goals and these variables. This research has generally not distinguished between the avoidance and approach components of performance goals, and this may partially explain the stronger associations between mastery goals and outcomes (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Middleton & Midgley, 1997; Skaalvik, 1997). The approach dimension of performance goals involves wanting to demonstrate competence, often superior competence relative to others. The avoidance dimension of performance goals represents a goal of avoiding appearing incompetent or less competent than others.

The question then becomes, what is it that influences whether students espouse mastery or performance goals? Parents and early experiences undoubtedly influence a child’s personal goals, although research on this relationship is scant. There is, however, growing evidence that the goals that students espouse arise in, are fostered by, and vary with the achievement situation experienced (e.g., Ames, 1990; Meece, 1991; Nicholls et al., 1985; Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996). If students are in a class where the “best” papers are posted, grading is on a curve, high achievers receive special privileges, and the teacher reminds students frequently of the importance of high grades and mistake-free papers, it makes sense that they would be oriented toward demonstrating their ability or hiding their lack of ability. On the other hand, if students are in a class where understanding is emphasized, mastery is the criterion, and effort and improvement are recognized, it makes sense that they would be oriented to developing their ability. We call the emphasis on achievement goals in the learning environment the “goal structure” (e.g., Ames, 1992; Ames & Ames, 1981; Covington & Omelich, 1984).

In their study examining the relationship between perceived goal stresses in the classroom and a variety of cognitive outcomes, Ames and Archer (1988) found consistently stronger relationships between a perceived emphasis on mastery goals and these outcomes than between perceived performance goals and outcomes. These results led Ames to suggest that an orientation to mastery goals is particularly powerful. In a study aimed at changing the goal structure in elementary school classrooms, Ames (1990) worked with teachers to develop specific strategies that would enhance the emphasis on mastery goals. At the end of one year, children in the classrooms in which the strategies were introduced reported that their classrooms were more mastery-focused than did children in control classrooms. In addition, at-risk students in treatment classrooms showed a stronger preference for challenging work, had more positive attitudes toward math and school, had higher self-concepts of ability, were more intrinsically motivated, and used more effective learning strategies than did peers in control classrooms (Ames, 1990). Whereas students’ scores on these variables declined significantly over the course of the academic year in control classrooms, there were no such declines among students in the treatment classrooms.

In the early 1990s, we conducted our first studies examining the goal structure in elementary and middle level schools. In a cross-sectional study, we found that elementary teachers and students reported that their schools emphasized mastery goals more than did middle school teachers and students. In addition, elementary school teachers reported that they used instructional practices that emphasized mastery goals, and endorsed mastery goals for their students more than did middle school teachers (Midgley, Anderman, & Hicks, 1995). In a longitudinal study (Anderman & Midgley, 1997), students perceived a greater emphasis on mastery goals in the classroom when they were in 5th grade in elementary school than when they were in 6th grade in middle school.

Because the study of the association between the classroom goal structures and students’ motivation, affect, and behavior is relatively new, a number of important questions remain. For example, little is known about the effects of moving from a classroom perceived to emphasize one type of goal in 5th grade to a classroom with a different goal structure in 6th grade. Although previous research has demonstrated that, on average, students in the 5th grade of elementary school perceive their classrooms to be more mastery goal oriented and less performance goal oriented than their middle school classrooms in 6th grade, there are undoubtedly some students who perceive little difference in the goal structure of their classrooms before and after the transition. There are also likely to be some students who perceive a greater emphasis on mastery goals or a lesser emphasis on performance goals after the transition to middle school. A comparison of these students’ motivational, behavioral, and affective characteristics will shed light on the possible effects of changes in the perceived classroom goal structure across the transition.

An additional question that has yet to be examined is whether the changes observed in students’ perceptions of the classroom goal structure, and the related changes in motivation, affect, and behavior, are mirrored in the second year of middle school as students move from 6th to 7th grade. Are students who perceive a change in the classroom goal structure when they make the transition to middle school more likely to experience changes in their motivation, affect, and behavior than students who experience changes in the goal structure during the middle school years? Simmons and her colleagues (e.g., Simmons & Blyth, 1987), who conducted a seminal study of the transition to middle level schools, concluded that young adolescents who experienced several important life changes in coincidence were at greater risk of negative outcomes. Thus, the move to a new, larger, more bureaucratic school environment, in concert with a change in the goal structure, would be expected to have a stronger relationship to student outcomes than a move within the same school environment.

In the present study, we examined whether changes in students’ perceptions of the mastery and performance classroom goal structures were associated with changes in their motivation (personal achievement goals, self-efficacy), affect (positive and negative affect at school), and performance (Grade Point Average—GPA) both when making the transition from elementary to middle school and within the first two years of middle school. We examined three hypotheses in this study. First, we hypothesized that changes in the perceived mastery classroom goal structure would be more strongly associated with changes in motivation, affect, and achievement than would changes in the perceived performance classroom goal structure. This hypothesis is based in part on results examining students’ personal goals, which generally find stronger effects for mastery than for performance goals. In addition, previous research examining the effects of mastery and performance classroom goal structures has generally found stronger associations between mastery goal structures and a variety of outcomes than for performance goal structures (e.g., Ames & Archer, 1988; Meece, 1991).

Our second hypothesis was about the effects of the direction of change in the perceived classroom goal structures. We believed that perceiving an increase in classroom mastery goal structure over time would be positively associated with changes in personal mastery goals, self-efficacy, and positive affect, whereas the opposite pattern would emerge among students who perceived a decrease in the classroom mastery goal structure. Research has generally failed to find a relationship between personal mastery goals and academic achievement (Harackiewicz et al., 1997), so we did not hypothesize any association between changes in the perceived classroom mastery goal structure and GPA. Of particular interest in this study is whether the effects of moving into classrooms that are perceived to be less mastery oriented has a stronger negative effect than the positive effects of moving into classrooms perceived to have a stronger mastery goal structure. Ames (1990) found that increasing the classroom mastery goal structure tended to offset the general patterns of decline over time in intrinsic motivation, self-concept of ability, attitudes toward reading and math, and cognitive strategy use, but she did not examine changes in motivation and performance associated with perceived decreases in the mastery goal structure. We did not have specific hypotheses regarding the different effects of perceived increases and decreases in the mastery goal structure but did examine these differences. Our direction-of-change hypothesis for performance goal structure was that a perceived increase in the performance goal structure would be associated with increases in personal performance goals but weakly or unrelated to the other dependent variables in the study.

Our third hypothesis was that the pattern of changes associated with changes in the perceived classroom goal structures would be similar across the transition to middle school (5th to 6th grade) and within the first two years of middle school (6th to 7th grade), but would be stronger across the transition. This hypothesis is based on research that suggests that transition to middle school represents a more profound change in many students’ lives than does the move from one year to the next within middle school.

Section snippets

Design and sample

This study is a part of a large-scale longitudinal study following students from the last year of elementary school (1994) to the first year of high school (1999).

Results

The overarching research question in this study was whether changes in students’ perceptions of the classroom goal structures were related to changes in their motivation, affect, and achievement. The first step in examining this question involved creating three groups for each of the two classroom goal structure variables (i.e., mastery and performance goal structures). To create the three groups, we first standardized students’ mastery and performance goal structure scores for both 5th and 6th

Discussion

Taken together, these results suggest that both across the transition from elementary to middle school and within the middle school years, whether the variables are measured at the general or domain specific level, those students who perceive a decrease in the emphasis on mastery goals in their classrooms from one year to the next also experience decreases in their scores on a variety of adaptive motivational and achievement variables. Those students who perceive an increase in the classroom

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the students and teachers who helped us examine and understand these issues.

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    This study was funded by the William T. Grant Foundation.

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