In achievement goal research, a mastery goal means trying to get better compared with your own past performance, and a performance goal means trying to do better than other people (Nicholls, 1984; Dweck, 1986). The largest test of mastery goals so far, conducted with students from dozens of countries who took part in the PISA assessment, found that mastery goals went with well-being and motivation much more strongly than with academic performance (Guo et al., 2023).
Mastery goals go with staying power more than with grades.
Other reviews point the same way. Nico Van Yperen and colleagues combined studies that measured performance objectively rather than by self-report, across work, sports and education, and found only a modest positive link between mastery goals and performance (Van Yperen, Blaga & Postmes, 2014). Across this research, mastery goals are more consistently tied to interest, persistence and well-being.
Why mastery-oriented students can earn lower grades.
Corwin Senko and Kenneth Miles studied how students with strong mastery goals actually prepared for a course. The title of their paper states the finding: mastery-oriented students tended to pursue their own learning agenda, spending their effort on the parts of the course that interested them, and that cost them on the material the course actually tested (Senko & Miles, 2008). Senko, Chris Hulleman and Judith Harackiewicz discuss this gap between mastery goals and grades in their review of the field (Senko, Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2011).
How the questions are worded changes the results.
Hulleman and colleagues found that researchers have used the same label, mastery goal, for questionnaires that measure noticeably different things, and that the results depend on which questionnaire was used (Hulleman et al., 2010). That is one reason findings in this area can look inconsistent. Before drawing a firm conclusion from a single study, it is worth checking what the questions actually asked.
The one thing to do.
Keep the mastery goal, because it is the part that keeps you in the work. Then, before your next exam or evaluation, lay your study plan next to what will actually be tested and look for the gaps. The topics you have been skipping because they bore you are usually the ones that need time this week.
If what you are working toward is a skill rather than a test, the post on the week-three wall covers how to aim practice at your weakest parts.
What this does not show.
Nearly all of this research is correlational and relies on questionnaires, so it shows which goals tend to go with which outcomes and does not establish cause. The measurement problem Hulleman and colleagues identified applies to the studies above as well. And performance on a course exam is only one outcome; the persistence and interest that mastery goals do predict matter a great deal over a career, even when they do not show up in a single grade.
References
- Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040–1048. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1040
- Guo, J., Hu, X., Elliot, A. J., Marsh, H. W., Murayama, K., Basarkod, G., Parker, P. D., & Dicke, T. (2023). Mastery-approach goals: A large-scale cross-cultural analysis of antecedents and consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(2), 397–420. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000436
- Hulleman, C. S., Schrager, S. M., Bodmann, S. M., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2010). A meta-analytic review of achievement goal measures: Different labels for the same constructs or different constructs with similar labels? Psychological Bulletin, 136(3), 422–449. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018947
- Nicholls, J. G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance. Psychological Review, 91(3), 328–346. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.91.3.328
- Senko, C., Hulleman, C. S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2011). Achievement goal theory at the crossroads: Old controversies, current challenges, and new directions. Educational Psychologist, 46(1), 26–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2011.538646
- Senko, C., & Miles, K. M. (2008). Pursuing their own learning agenda: How mastery-oriented students jeopardize their class performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33(4), 561–583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.12.001
- Van Yperen, N. W., Blaga, M., & Postmes, T. (2014). A meta-analysis of self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance across three achievement domains (work, sports, and education). PLOS ONE, 9(4), e93594. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093594
