Study harder? The relationship of achievement goals to attitudes and self-reported use of desirable difficulties in self-regulated learning
Study harder? The relationship of achievement goals to attitudes and self-reported use of desirable difficulties in self-regulated learning

Summary/Abstract: We examined whether achievement goal motivations differentially relate to students’ attitudes and self-reported use of desirable difficulties in personal learning. We argue that different achievement goals correspond with different levels of mental engagement, inclination to elaborate on learning content, and invested effort. We hypothesized that cognitively effortful and long-term oriented learning strategies will be preferred by students with higher intrinsic motivation for deeper processing and less avoidance of necessary effort, and by those aiming for long-term skill acquisition rather than performance objectives. In line with these new predictions, students with higher mastery goal orientation reported positive attitudes and more application of desirable difficulties. By contrast, students with avoidance goal motivations were less favorable and indicated less usage; performance approach goals were unrelated. When considering all achievement motivations simultaneously as predictors, as expected, only mastery goals remained significant. This new finding was robust despite testing against an alternative, conceptually related construct: regardless of controlling for intrinsic cognitive motivation (need for cognition), mastery goal orientation still predicted attitudes and self-reported use of desirable difficulties. Implications for (self-regulated) learning processes are discussed.

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