Performance Approach

Causes of Performance Approach:

Students are more likely to focus on a task when they are oriented towards learning or focused on their own degree of mastery. Studies suggest that students are more apt to engage in challenging tasks, have better feelings toward challenging tasks and adapt to future challenges when they adopt a mastery orientation. Performance goals seem to lead to students feeling like they need to learn for the test or for a grade. Challenging tasks based on a mastery goal orientation open up possibilities of failure, which might make students unwilling to perform said task. To challenge this, teachers should emphasize the importance of learning, encourage effort, and remind students that mistakes happen. Students perform better when classroom environments are encouraging and offer personal responsibility for the student. Student motivation stems from their own learning perception. If a student feels constantly discouraged from a bad grade, they will dismiss the subject entirely. However, if a student receives positive feedback from teachers despite their grade, they might continue to try to learn the content. (Ames and Archer, 1988).

Students who value their self perception might try hard in a class to show their abilities in academia. However, when students perform this way, they miss out on actual learning of a subject, they only perform to preserve their perception. Students might also be only motivated to receive good grades. They might only study for tests and worksheets, absorbing information from a textbook only to regurgitate it right back onto a test. When students are solely orientated on receiving good grades, they do not understand the content, just the facts of the content. For example, a student might not be interested in history, but they study hard for tests. They might know that D-Day took place on June 6, 1944, and that it took place on the Normandy shores of France. They would know this information because the teacher said these questions would be on the test. However, the students might completely overlook what the goal of the D-Day invasion was and who the belligerents were. Thus, the student would get an exceptional grade on the test because they knew the date and location of D-Day, but they would have no idea on the background of the invasion. (Midgley, Kaplan and Middleton, 2001).

Effects of Performance Approach:

The performance approach has some pros and cons. On one hand, this motivational pattern will allow students to achieve high scores, even when they have no interest in the topic at hand. On the other hand, a student who solely exhibits this motivational pattern may be more likely to attach their self worth to their abilities. In other words, these students are likely to asses their personal opinion of themselves based on their ability to perform well on class material. Similar to the performance avoidance, this motivational pattern will cause students to fear failure because they believe it will cause them to appear incapable or unworthy. These students strive to achieve the highest scores, but will view failure as an intellectually defining moment. These students do not view failure as an opportunity for growth; they view it as a sign that they simply are incapable of completing a task.

Interestingly enough, overachieving is a form of self handicapping (Covington, 1992). This type of self handicapping is less obvious, because the immediate effects of high academic achievement appear to be positive. However, as this behavior progresses, overachievers become doubtful of their self worth. Achieving increasingly difficult goals become a burden to prove their worth rather than a gratifying experience (Covington, 1992). These individuals tend to be perfectionists to fail to forgive failure and therefore fail to forgive themselves. Again, similarly to students experiencing the performance avoidance goal orientation, students who exhibit the performance approach goal orientation are mainly concerned with their outward appearance. This insecurity has a heavily weighted influence on the students experience in the classroom. It is our hope as teachers that our students will enjoy the process of learning and forming their own conclusions; however, when grades become emphasized over learning, students begin to attach feelings of anxiety with classroom material. The performance approach goal orientation can be beneficial to an extent, but students need to know that their identity is not tied up with their test scores.

What can Teachers do?

Teachers can consistently give constructive feedback to their students, and that will help motivate them to master the content in the class. If students are constantly affirmed by their instructor, and equally challenged to do better, and they are guided in their improvement, students will be less concerned with their "performance" and more concerned with their own individual learning process.

Performance approach students are driven not necessarily by their desire to learn and develop skills but rather how they compare to their peers. They do not want to be seen as performing worse than their peers and will work hard to be better than them. As an educator this is somewhat of interesting situation as on one hand these students tend to perform quite well as they want to outperform their peers, or at the very least do not want to be embarrassed by under performing, but also tend to be somewhat hard on themselves if they do not perform as well as they would like. In order to change this mentality it is important to have students feel as though what they are doing has a purpose outside of testing, that they’re effort is recognized, and that they have more control within the classroom. Connecting the tasks that they are asked to complete with a set of short terms goals can help students to understand why they are being asked to complete said task. Giving students some control over the way that the task is completed can also increase intrigue and make students feel more active in their growth leading to more mastery focused goals (Ames, 1992). Shifting students focus on grades to self improvement in the realm of evaluations can also shift away from performance oriented goals. Allowing students to improve upon their work fosters great habits that begin to make students feel as though improvement is the goal rather than a static number on a test (Ames, 1992). Allowing students some choice in the classroom also makes them feel as though they have some level of control over their education which makes it feel more personal. However, with this it is important to hold students accountable for their work and to guide them in a supportive way (Deemer, 2004).