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Achievement Orientation
Achievement Orientation refers to how an individual interprets and reacts to tasks, resulting in different patterns of cognition, affect and behavior. Developed within a social-cognitive framework, achievement goal theory proposes that students’ motivation and achievement-related behaviors can be understood by considering the reasons or purposes they adopt while engaged in academic work. The focus is on how students think about themselves, their tasks, and their performance. In general, an individual can be said to be “mastery” or “performance” oriented, based on whether one’s goal is to develop one’s ability or to demonstrate one’s ability, respectively. Achievement orientations have been shown to be associated with individuals’ academic achievement, adjustment, and well-being ; ;.

Brief History
Research on achievement motivation can be traced back to the 1940’s following the seminal work of David McClelland and colleagues who established the link between achievement and motivations (see  Need for achievement). Students’ achievement orientations were shown to be predictive of academic performance, specifically, students with high achievement orientation tended to value competence, expect success and seek challenges, while students with low achievement motivation tended to expect failure and avoid challenges.

In an effort to better understand the mechanisms underlying achievement, personality and  social psychology researchers expanded McClelland’s work by examining how cognitive representations shape social experiences. Personality researchers have explored aspects of achievement motivation as an aspect of identity, whereas social psychologists have focused on the thought patterns that arise across various contexts.

Two-Factor Model of Achievement Orientation
Significant research and a consistent pattern of results have demonstrated that an individual’s achievement orientation in a particular domain can be characterized by one of two distinct achievement profiles: mastery orientation or performance orientation.

Mastery Orientation
A mastery orientation is characterized by the belief that success is the result of effort and use of the appropriate strategies. Mastery oriented individuals strive to develop their understanding and competence at a task by exerting a high level of effort. Across numerous studies, mastery orientation has been shown to promote adaptive patterns of learning, which ultimately lead to high academic achievement and adjustment. For example, students with a mastery orientation are more intrinsically motivated to learn, use deeper cognitive strategies, and persist through challenge and failure ; ;.

Performance
A performance orientation is characterized by the belief that success is the result of superior ability and of surpassing one’s peers. Performance oriented individuals desire to outperform others and demonstrate (validate) their ability. Research has shown that a performance orientation predicts negative affect, avoidance of challenge and poor achievement outcomes.

Four-Factor Model of Achievement Orientation
More recent conceptualizations of achievement orientation have added an additional element. The traditional mastery and performance orientations are broken down to include approach and avoidance components ; ), resulting in four distinct achievement profiles: mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance.

A mastery-approach orientation describes individuals who are focused on learning as much as possible, overcoming challenges through hard work, or increasing their competence at a task.

A mastery-avoidance orientation describes individuals who want to avoid doing worse than they have done before or failing to learn as much as possible.

A performance-approach orientation describes individuals who want to demonstrate and prove to others their high ability.

A performance-avoidance orientation describes individuals who strive to avoid looking incompetent, or less able than their peers by cultivating an appearance of effortless achievement ;.

Views of Intelligence
Epistemological beliefs of intelligence have similarly been shown to influence academic achievement.

Entity Theory of Intelligence
If an individual has an entity (also referred to as “fixed”) view of intelligence, they believe that intelligence is an unchanging characteristic and are more likely to think effort plays little to no role in outcome. In other words, you are either smart, or you are not. This is particularly maladaptive in academia. Students believe that effort is unnecessary because if you are smart, everything should come easy, and if you are not smart, hard work cannot compensate for this deficiency. Students with an entity view of intelligence are more likely to develop a fear of failure ;, resulting in the avoidance of “intellectual tasks,” and giving up in the face of difficulty. The rationale is that if you are smart, effort is unnecessary, and if you are not, there is nothing you can do to change this.

Incremental Theory of Intelligence
In opposition to entity theory, individuals with an incremental (also referred to as “flexible,” and “malleable”) view of intelligence believe that intelligence is adjustable. The belief is that intelligence is the result of hard work and the use of the appropriate strategies. This is particularly adaptive because rather than giving up in the face of failure or challenge, those who endorse an incremental view of intelligence interpret these setbacks as inevitable for learning to take place. Because they are not worried that exertion of effort is a reflection of lack of intelligence, they are not afraid to work hard, resulting in an outperformance of their entity theory peers. To illustrate, Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck (2007) found that even after two years, students with an incremental view of intelligence, academically outperformed students who had an entity view of intelligence.

Mindsets
Mindset refers to an individual’s belief about oneself and one’s most basic qualities, such as talent, intelligence, and personality. Although the majority of research on mindsets has focused primarily on how they affect educational achievement, mindsets have also been shown to be influential in athletics, health and well-being, business and relationships.

Fixed Mindset
Fixed mindsets are characterized by the belief that one’s basic qualities are fixed – as if genetically predetermined. Individuals with fixed mindsets believe that practice has no relationship to performance success, which has been shown to be maladaptive across domains.

Growth Mindset
Growth mindsets are characterized by the belief that talents and abilities are things that are developed through effort, practice and instruction. Individuals with growth mindsets feel that they control their success, rather than external forces, so they are better able to problem solve and persist through setbacks. Research has shown that growth mindsets foster a more positive attitude toward practice and learning, a desire for feedback, a greater ability to deal with setbacks, and significantly better performance over time.

Factors Influencing Achievement Orientation
Achievement orientations have been shown to be influenced by a combination of cognitive-motivational and contextual factors.

Praise
One factor that has been shown to be influential in the development of achievement orientations is the type of praise given to individuals. Type of praise not only affects behaviors, beliefs, emotions and outcomes immediately after it is imparted, but has also been shown to have long term consequences. Specifically, it affects how individuals deal with future difficulties and their willingness to apply effort to challenges that may come their way (. Verbal praise is often administered as a way to reinforce the performance or behavior of individuals and although there may be positive intentions, some types of praise can have debilitating implications for the recipient. The specific distinction lies in what the praise is directed towards.

Process Praise
Process praise is focused on the actions taken by the individual, especially their effort and problem solving strategies, such as “Great job! You’re working really hard.” Process praise reinforces the association between success and effort (or behavior) rather than a fixed ability, which cultivates the more adaptive mastery orientation and incremental view of intelligence.

Person Praise
Person praise is focused on the individual themselves, similar to an affirmation of self-worth, such as, “Wow, you’re so smart.” Because it applauds the individual by applying a label or an unchangeable characteristic, person praise promotes a performance orientation and a fixed view of intelligence. Students are being rewarded, through praise, for their performance based on their ability.

Mueller and Dweck (1998) found that children who were given person praise had worse task performance, more low-ability attributions, reported less task enjoyment and exhibited less task persistence, than children who were given process praise. The children given person praise were more focused on performance goals and described intelligence as a fixed trait (fixed mindset), in contrast to the children given process praise, who were more focused on learning goals and described intelligence as a fluid concept (growth mindset). Additionally, Kamins and Dweck (1999) showed that person praise is more likely to promote helpless responses to subsequent failures than process praise.

Although praise for intelligence is usually well-intentioned, and can be motivating when students are doing well, it backfires when students eventually face work that is difficult for them. When this happens, the failure is a threat to the person’s sense of his or her own intelligence—a situation to avoid. Thus, praise for intelligence is a short-term strategy that makes successful students feel good at the moment, but one that is detrimental to students in the longer run.

Gender
Many things affect achievement orientation. We’ll look further into this by discussing various factors. In general, it has been shown that gender differences in achievement orientation are unclear. For example, research by Dweck has shown gender differences with females being more extrinsic or performance oriented. On the other hand, Meece and Holt found that girls were more likely to have learning as a primary goal, whereas boys in this example were more likely to have extrinsic or performance goals. It is difficult to say exactly what the differences are across genders, but Joanna Giota conducted an experiment doing so. As stated before, Joanna Giota conducted a study overseeing adolescent’s goal orientations varying between genders. Although her results ended up being unclear, they did come to some conclusions. Giota looked at children in grades six and eight. In this study it is assumed that gender influences the development of different rationales for action. In turn these are assumed to affect the ways pupils engage in different learning situations in school, these then are assumed to result in gender-related differences in learning and achievement goals. Boys and girls are said to strive for different kinds of goals in schools, therefore demonstrating different types of motivation and goal orientation. The experiment looked at eight different goal orientations: self-now, self-future, others-now, preventive-future, self-now + self- future, others now+ preventive-future, integrative, and negative/critical. The goal of the experiment was to see whether or not girls and boys differ in these subcategories. The results were as follows: in grade six the gender-influenced pupils’ achievement outcomes in mathematics directly. In grade eight boys indicated higher motivation and ambition to obtain higher grades in mathematics and the natural sciences. The number of girls holding an integrative and a self now + self-future and an others-now + preventive future goal orientation was higher than the number of boys. Boys on the other hand hold a higher self-now and other-now goal orientation than girls. So what do these results mean? It means there is variation across genders. Boys have higher immediate achievement orientation (self-now). It seems that girls look further into the future more, and are also more aware of others, which affects their achievement orientation (others-now + preventive future). Overall, like Giota originally said, the results are unclear.

Relationship Effects
Relationships also influence achievement orientation. It is believed that by early elementary school, children know their educational strengths, influencing their achievement orientation at such an early age. Wigfield and Cambria’s paper considers the expectancy value theory, which posits that the value of a subject or activity depends on the importance it has to the individual. Therefore, an individual who values math over English classes will be more achievement oriented to her math classes. Furthermore, the importance of the activity is dependent on various sociocultural influences. Therefore, the values of children’s socializers- particularly parents- influence their children’s achievement orientation. For example, parental education level is an important indicator of their child’s achievement orientation. This is because parental education level generally indicates the socioeconomic status of the family, the family structure, and parental involvement in their children’s lives. Giordano found that adverse socioeconomic status, untraditional family structures, and minimal parental involvement lead to lower achievement orientation in children. Giordano’s study was longitudinal researching the effects of parental, peer, and romantic relationships on the achievement orientation of its adolescent subjects. The study found that parental and peer relationships influenced achievement orientation more than romantic relationships did; however, there is also more research devoted to parental and peer relationship effects on achievement orientation. Peers influence achievement orientation because children tend to spend the most time with others who are similar to them, therefore having similar academic goals and achievement. Those with friends having high academic aspirations tended to have fewer problems academically. It seems as if the drive and desire to be similar to peers is the reason for higher achievement orientation. According to the study, there does not seem to be a gender difference in relation to peer relationships and achievement orientation. In contrast, there is a great gender difference in relation to romantic relationships and achievement orientation. The achievement orientation of girls is more likely to be adversely affected by romantic relationships than that of boys, who are basically unaffected by romantic relationships. Furthermore, boyfriends tend to demoralize their girlfriend’s academic achievements and goals; therefore, girls academic aspirations influenced by their achievement orientation dwindle and is adversely affected by romantic relationships.

Implications
An individual’s achievement orientation has a significant impact on his or her cultivation of new skills, and thus has important implications for educators. Classroom environments that foster comparison between students lead those students to develop performance-oriented attitudes toward education. A Chinese study on the effects of classroom competition found that learning in a competitive environment leads to increased performance on easy tasks, but also leads students to become more performance oriented were more likely to sacrifice learning opportunities to be positively evaluated. A non-competitive environment allows students to value learning rather than immediate performance success. .