Cause of Motivational Patterns

Cause of Performance Approach: Performance approach goals have more positive consequences on motivation and achievement. This performance goal occurs when students want to show that their competency levels are above their peers. This is also known as a need for achievement. "In a number of studies, performance goals have been associated positively with outcomes closely related to achievement, such as academic self-efficacy, course grades, and test scores" (Midgley, Kaplin, Middleton, 2001). Students who have performance approach goals are motivated and create these goals in order to increase their grades, test scores, and overall self -efficacy which is part of why these motivational patterns occur. We see students wanting to be better than their peers but create goals that allow them to grow in academics and we see that these students also tend to be more motivated as well. It should also be noted that particularly male students are positively impacted by this performance goal. "...for boys, there was a positive relation between performance-approach goals and associating with friends with a positive orientation toward school..." (Midgley, Kaplin, Middleton, 2001). Another reason this pattern occurs is due to the fact that students tend to make goals based on whether they like school and whether they make friends who also have a positive orientation towards school. However, for females, they didn't find any relation between performance approach goals and friends who have a positive orientation with school. Overall, this topic is underresearched but these findings can also be a reason as to why these motivational patterns occur, but more specifically in boys. 

Cause of performance avoidance: This performance goal is caused by students’ desire to avoid looking incompetent or failing. This can be observed when students avoid doing classwork either by causing distractions or shutting down. "Performance-avoidance goals tend to produce negative effects... such as mild anxiety and the use of “surface” learning strategies that focus on rote memorization" (Senko C., Hulleman S. C., Harackiewicz M. J., 2011). Students that have these motivational patterns are creating performance avoidant goals which affects how they learn and how they memorize information, as stated above, students experience mild anxiety and are using surface level strategies to get through school. They're not attempting to learn to their full capacity and create performance avoidant goals in order to make sure that they don't seem incompetent or seem like they're failing which in turn also creates that anxiety and decrease in actual learning. 

Observable Behavior: As previously mentioned, external and internal antecedents impact how likely students are to exhibit traits of performance approach or avoidance. The text states that there“...specific features of the learning environment, such as task difficulty and evaluation structure, may indirectly influence goal endorsement by shifting students’ perceptions of competence…”(L. Linnenbrink-Garcia, M.J. Middleton, K.D. Ciani, M.A. Easter, 2012). With avoidance behavior, teachers might observe students displaying test/general anxiety. On the other hand, students who are motivated by the approach goal may display exploring their interests and engaging in material more frequently.