Increasing Students’ Mathematics Achievement at University by Changing Their Non-Mastery Goals into Mastery Learning Goals

Despite the implementation of various motivation theories suggested by researchers, the achievements of students in mathematics have persistently been poor, hence there is a great need to explore the best ways to increase students’ achievement in mathematics. The goals that students have in the process of study are essential for reaching success. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the achievement goal motivation theory on students’ learning outcomes in mathematics. Three types of goal orientation were specified in this study, which are mastery-learning goal orientation (MG), performance-approach goal orientation (PAG), and performance-avoidance goal orientation (PAvG). The research asserts that possessing mastery-learning goal motivation has a more positive impact on university students’ academic achievement than the performance approach goal orientation, while the performance-avoidance goal orientation has a negative impact. This research is a quantitative study and experiment. Experimental study was held in 2015/2016 academic year at private Suleyman Sah University in Turkey with 39 students majoring in Business and Administrative Science, which would define, whether, as a result of teaching, following the offered model, the students of the experimental group would change their learning goals and improve their academic achievement. The results show that mastery-learning goal orientation is the best fit for achievement in mathematics at university. The experiment held according to the model developed by the researcher revealed that the model was really effective and helped many students who were initially performance- approach or performance-avoidance goal-oriented to change their goals into mastery goals