Student Goal Orientation and Formative Assessment

Abstract This study examined the role of formative assessment in the development of student goal orientations. Students in one elementary school were examined over the course of a school year as they participated in a reading program using continuous formative assessment. Mastery orientation remained consistently high and performance orientation decreased. Students' personal goal orientations were significantly related to their perceptions of their goals for reading. Introduction As teachers, our ultimate goal is to foster lifelong learning. School is an opportunity for students to gain skills and content knowledge, but without the motivation to seek out and confront challenge there will be no lifelong growth, success, and satisfaction. A major concern for teachers and administrators when choosing any new learning program is whether that program will support learning for its own sake. If a program in math or reading encourages students to put forth effort in exchange for immediate, ephemeral prizes at the expense of fostering a lasting appreciation for and enjoyment of math or reading, the end result for us as teachers is disappointing. Educational researchers have found feedback, whether formative (i.e., providing ongoing assessment that shapes subsequent lessons) or summative (i.e., providing a final assessment of students' skills), can affect students' motivation for continuing with a task and for engaging in that task in the future. Feedback does so by affecting the types of achievement goals students set for themselves (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Achievement Goal Theory states there are two types of goal orientations: mastery orientation and performance orientation (Kaplan, Middleton, Urdan, & Midgley, 2002). Mastery-oriented learners are focused on learning as something valuable and meaningful in itself. They view learning tasks as ongoing processes, are more concerned with charting their own progress than comparing their progress to that of others, and view all outcomes as opportunities to learn something about themselves. Research consistently has shown mastery-oriented learners are more willing to take risks, are more likely to use deep processing strategies, and are more willing and able to work on their own than performance-oriented learners (Kaplan et al., 2002). The mastery-oriented learner is focused on learning for the sake of learning. Performance-oriented learners are harder to pin down. They locus on the learning product or outcome measure and proving their ability relative to others. Their chief concern is getting a better score or grade than other students in their class. Performance-oriented students want to be seen as being at the top of the class, or, just as importantly, not seen as being at the bottom (Pintrich, 2000). Not surprisingly, performance-oriented learning has been associated with less adaptive patterns of beliefs and behaviors such as surface learning strategies, decreased adaptive help seeking behaviors, and lack of intellectual risk taking (Midgely, Kaplan, & Middleton, 2001). However, high performance orientation also has been associated with adaptive motivation such as increased self-efficacy and high task value (Pintrich, 2000). In an attempt to clarify performance orientation researchers have differentiated between performance-approach and performance-avoid goal orientations, performance-approach students seek out challenges as ways to establish themselves as top students; though they are not focused on learning (as mastery students would be), they may learn and grow from these experiences. Performance-avoid students, however, are concerned with not failing, and run from challenges or engage in self-sabotaging behaviors in order to have an excuse for poor performance (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). In summary, mastery orientation is strongly associated with adaptive motivational patterns, and performance-avoid orientation is strongly associated with maladaptive motivational patterns. …