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.