The Effect of Achievement Goals on Self-Explanation and Transfer: Investigating the Role of Motivation on Learning

The role of student motivation in learning is an important issue for research to address, both for theoretical and practical purposes. The present research study tested a hypothesized behavioral pathway for previously documented benefits of student motivation – in particular, mastery-approach achievement goals – on learning and transfer (Belenky & Nokes-Malach, 2012). Achievement goals are the reasons students have for engaging in academic settings, such as wanting to develop their competence (mastery-approach goal), wanting to do better than their peers (performance-approach goal), or not wanting to do any worse than their peers (performance-avoidance goal). The present study manipulated achievement goals (mastery-approach, performance-approach, or performance-avoidance) that participants adopted while learning, and subsequently being tested on, basic statistical knowledge and procedures. It was predicted that mastery-approach goals would lead to higher levels of knowledge transfer. Additionally, talk aloud protocols were collected and coded to test hypothesis that mastery-approach goals would lead to more constructive learning processes, such as self-explanation. Finally, it was expected that the degree of self-explanations a student engaged in would be predictive of transfer. These hypotheses were not supported. Contrary to expectations, the performance-avoidance condition produced higher levels of transfer than the mastery-approach condition. Additionally, there were no differences between conditions in the amount of self-explanations generated. The amount of self-explanations was itself not predictive of transfer. These results are discussed in terms of possible ways the methodology may have reduced the difficulty of transfer, as well as what the results may mean for achievement goal theory, more broadly