STRIVING TO VALIDATE COMPETENCE VERSUS STRIVING TO ATTAIN NORMATIVE SUPERIORITY: Two Distinct Motivational Processes With Different Implications for the Self

초록

Students encounter many obstacles during learning. When difficulties arise, some display willingness to overcome them with sustained effort and persistence, while others despair and give up prematurely. These differences in student responses and degrees of psychological well-being toward impediments cannot be attributed entirely to differences in student ability. Two students with similar ability and achievement history often demonstrate vastly different reactions to the same challenges and potential failures. Why do such differences exist? In this chapter, we focus on two underlying purposes with which students approach achievement tasks, as one possible answer to this question. Among many achievement goals proposed during the past several decades, mastery goals and performance goals have been associated with the most contrasting patterns of cognition, affect, and behavior in the achievement context. Students with mastery goals believe ability is malleable and thus strive to improve their competence by mastering novel tasks. Students with performance goals believe ability is fixed and hence strive to demonstrate their superior competence or to hide their inferior competence. We propose that there is more to the story-we argue that, even when students pursue the same performance goals, the psychological experience they undergo is qualitatively different, depending on whether they strive primarily to validate competence or to attain normatively superior competence. In this chapter, we present a brief overview of the achievement goal theory, identify contentious issues in extant achievement goal research, and argue for the need to distinguish between the ability and normative goals that have different implications for positive psychology. We discuss how this distinction can advance our understanding of student motivation and psychological well-being. © 2017 Information Age Publishing Inc.