The Influence of Perceived Classroom Goals and Prior Beliefs on Aspects of Student Motivation.

A primary objective of this study was to examine the relations among students' perceptions of the classroom goal orientation as ability-focused goals and their own goals, as well as the relationships between these two components and other motivational factors such as subject-specific self-efficacy and task value. An additional purpose was to determine the role of students' prior beliefs about intelligence on their goals, sense of efficacy, and values. Subjects were 194 sixth graders who completed 2 instruments, the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey (Midgley and Maehr, 1990) and a second survey constructed to measure items regarding perceptions of classroom goal orientation. Results suggest that, while perceptions of classroom goal stresses may not have a strong direct effect on how much students value their subject, there is a strong indirect effect through personal goals and self-efficacy of classroom goal stresses on subject valuing. Causes of the positive relationships between relative ability goals, self-efficacy, and subject valuing are not clear, but it is clear that it is important to differentiate between extrinsic and relative ability goals in future research, because these two goals relate with other motivational constructs in very different ways. Support is also found for the notion that there are domain differences in motivation. Four tables and one figure present study findings. (Contains 32 references.) (SLD)