ORIENTATIONS ACROSS DOMAINS

In my last paper, I argued that attribution theory focused too
narrowly on the process of motivation by only emphasizing outcome
attribution as predictive of later outcomes. When we read about
goal/intentional theories it was nice to see that the theory
acknowledged a bi-directional relationship between perceptions of
ability and attitudes. I personally feel that my perceptions,
emotions, values and intentions line up with my particular goal which
in turn influences outcome. However, now I battle with the idea that
my goals might possibly differ across situations. For instance, if I
am ego oriented (do my work to show superior performance) will that
goal always be salient in all achievement settings? Putting it
differently, can situational contexts (classroom climates, teaching
methods, reward structures etc.) influences changes in goal
orientation or are goals a stable personality trait like intentional
theories suggest?

This question is particularly important for my current research on
different classroom climates. Would goal orientation be different in
different classroom settings (same sex vs. co-ed) or are orientations
more of a trait in each individual are generalized across different
settings? In this short paper I hope to get a better understanding of
how the intentional theories by Dweck and Nicholls explain orientations
across domains.

There is considerable evidence that situational factors influence
achievement motivation as well as to vary across individuals.
Research evidence shows that situational demands can affect the
salience of specific goals, which results in differential patterns of
cognition, affect, and performance. When social comparison has been
made salient, students have focused on their ability and these
self-perceptions have mediated performance and attributions to success
and failure. Additionally, when absolute standards, self-improvement
or participation have been emphasized students focus more on their
effort and task strategies (Ames and Archer, 1988). Thorkildsen and
Nicholls (1998) showed in their research that the more task oriented a
class is, the more the students in that class believe that success
depends on effort, interest, attempts to understand and collaboration
with peers and the more satisfied they are with learning in school.
Ego oriented classes are more inclined to believe that academic success
depends on being smarter than others and trying to beat others. Thus,
similar conclusions apply whether one speaks of the motivational
climate of classrooms or individual differences in motivational
orientation.

Do these results fall in place with the intentional theory
framework? John Nicholls proposes that students are educational
theorists and that they construct theories much like scientists do.
Instead of speaking of logic and accuracy as descriptive of a good
theory, Nicholls talks about the usefulness of scientific
interpretations. However, usefulness cannot be judged from any
abstract, absolute position and therefore the value or adaptiveness of
any interpretation depends on one's purposes. Students, like
scientists, approach their work with different purposes and the
concepts they employ, the data they collect and the way they interpret
it can be understood in terms of these purposes/goals. Therefore,
students' interpretations of different aspects of school are very tied
to their goals (ego and task) (Nicholls, 1992). Nicholls looks at
goal orientations almost like traits, like a general theory that is
applied to different situations and has found that students educational
theories cut across schoolwork and sport (correlation of .60).
However, in Nicholls' view behavior is always a function of the
situation and traits are changeable entities that are part of the
individual. Additionally traits can be inconsistent and multifaceted
and therefore we can not predict that one's behavior always reveals
one's goals (Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 1998). Moreover, Nicholls
believes that the goal orientation scales ask for what kinds of
satisfaction a person seeks. He believes there is a big difference in
how a person defines success but another thing to actually seek these
goals or even to think it is possible to achieve them equally in
different types of situations (Nicholls, 1992).

Carol Dweck works within the language of personality theory and
characterizes achievement motivation in terms of stable traits.
Personality psychologists presume that individuals determine the nature
of their experience and presume that achievement motivation is an
aspect of identity. Mostly, Dweck has related achievement goals with
attributional theory by studying different reactions to failure (note
the additional work-avoidance part of her performance goal definition)
(Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 1998). Dweck also proposes similar goals
(performance vs. learning) that individuals pursue in achievement
situations. The underlying differences between goals lies in the
student's conceptualization about intelligence. Dweck maintains that
children's theories of intelligence appear to orient them toward
different goals. Children that believe intelligence is a fixed trait
tend to orient toward gaining favorable judgments of that trait
(performance goals) whereas children who believe intelligence is a
malleable quality tend to orient toward developing that quality
(learning goals) (Dweck, 1986). According to Dweck, individuals
cannot hold both learning and performance goals because they do not
hold contradictory conceptions of intelligence.
Dweck views each goal as generating its own set of concerns and as
creating its own framework for processing incoming information.
Additionally, Dweck believes that subsequent events, such as failure
outcomes, may then provide information that is relevant. Dweck
therefore views goals as stable traits and attributions for failure
dependent on the individual goal orientation. For example, individuals
that pursue learning goals do not attribute their failure to lack of
ability but as information to change their strategies towards increased
understanding (Dweck, 1988:5; Diener & Dweck, 1980). In support of
this, Diener and Dweck (1980) did an experimental study that showed
that mastery oriented kids seemed not to be as affected by failure as
were helpless children that avoided challenging tasks.

When these two different takes on intentional theory are compared it
seems that Dweck's intentional framework does not easily explain
situational influences on goals very clearly. In Dweck's framework
individual goals are a stable personality trait and goals are derived
from conceptions of intelligence (malleable or fixed). Since a person
cannot be both learning and performance oriented at the same time,
situational factors should not be able to affect individual goals. In
contrast Nicholls' framework has room to explain situational influences
quite comfortably. First since ego and task orientations are usually
not correlated a person can have a theory that leads to high ego and
high task orientation. Different situational influences can therefore
influence either of the two goal orientations to be more salient at a
given time and place. Secondly, although Nicholls proposes that goals
are trait-like he also suggested that traits can sometimes be
inconsistent and multifaceted and therefore we could not always infer
goal orientations from observed behavior.

References:

Diener, C.I., and Dweck, C.S. (1980). An analysis of Learned
Helplessness: II. The processing of Success. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 39,5, 940-952.
Dweck. C.S. (1986). Motivational Processes Affecting Learning.
American Psychologist, 41, 10, 1040-1048.
Ames, C. and Archer, J. (1988). Achievement Goals in the Classroom:
Students' Learning Strategies and Motivational Processes. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 80, 3, 260-267.