Rethinking Achievement Goals: When Are Thety Adaptive for College Students and Why?

The types of goals that students adopt in educational settings and the conseque:nce:s of those goals an 2 important educational outcomes-performance and intrinsic motivation-are disciussed. In the case of performance, we briefly review and evaluate a large body of fheory and research conducted by other investigators. In particular, we consider the possibility that some commonly accepted conclusions about the effects of achievement goals are premature. In the case of intrinsic motivation, we describe a theoretical model that has guided our own work on this topic and provide some recent experimental results. We believe that this model and our experimental results can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of goals and optimal motivation. Finally, we return to the college classroom environment and e;c.amine the consequences of goals for both performance and intiinsic motivation, offering a broader analysis of success in college courses.