Chicken or the egg : longitudinal analysis of the causal dilemma between goal orientation, self-regulation and cognitive processing strategies in higher education

The aim of this study was to investigate the direction of the effect between goal orientation, self-regulation and learning strategies in order to understand the impact of these three constructs on students’ achievement. The participants were 110 freshmen from the engineering faculty at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who were followed during the first three years of their university studies. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The main findings were that mastery goal orientation increased students’ subsequent deep processing which in turn enhanced subsequent self-regulation. Moreover, paths remained significant when the impact of student’s achievement was controlled for. The implications of our results for the understanding of the interplay between cognitive and motivational processes in higher education are discussed