Achievement Goal Pursuit 1 Running head: ACHIEVEMENT GOAL PURSUIT Achievement Goal Pursuit: Are Different Goals Activated and More Beneficial in Different Types of Academic Situations?

Achievement goal theory has emerged as a predominant framework for understanding students ' achievement motivation (Midgley et al., 1998; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996), however much debate still surrounds how many types of achievement goals exist and which types of achievement goals are advantageous to pursue. Initially achievement goal theorists (e.g., Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984) proposed a dichotomous model that distinguished between two types of goals: mastery and performance. Although early research generally revealed that adaptive outcomes were linked to mastery goals and less adaptive outcomes were linked with performance goals (Ames, 1992), current theorizing notes another dimension of achievement goal pursuit that distinguishes between approach and avoidance strivings (e.g., Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996). This distinction was first used to separate out two types of performance goals, resulting in a trichotomous achievement goal model involving mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Adding this distinction helped clarify a number of discrepancies on when performance goals were most likely to have adaptive or maladaptive consequences (Rawsthorne & Elliot, 1999). It also led many theorists to rethink whether more adaptive outcomes were associated with a sole mastery goal pursuit or a combination of mastery and performance-approach goals (Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002). Recently this distinction was extended to separate out two types of mastery goals, resulting in a 2 (mastery vs. performance) x 2 (approach vs. avoidance) model of achievement goals (Elliot &amp