Kritische bedenkingen bij Growth Mindset and motivation van Carol Dweck van Carol Dweck

"The main problem we face is that there appears to be no strong relations between performance-approach orientations and achievement. There is certainly an emotional component at play and this could provide us with a way to reconcile these findings."

All this would suggest that a mastery goal orientation is directly related to higher levels of achievement; however, the evidence doesn’t necessarily support this view. Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and one of the foremost researchers into emotions and motivation, analysed 74 correlational studies, finding that only about 40 per cent of them showed a positive relationship between mastery orientation and academic achievement with five per cent showing a negative relationship. This would certainly suggest that there is some benefit to mastery goal orientation, but in research terms the results are not deemed statistically significant, in other words, the effect is too small, so we can’t be sure of any causal relationship. Frustratingly, there is also some concern over the relationship between performance-approach goals and academic outcomes, with some studies showing a positive correlation between performance-approach goals and cognitive regulation while other studies have found no significant relationship or even a negative relationship.

Inconsistent findings don’t necessarily mean the theory is flawed, it can mean that things are more complex or nuanced than the theory originally proposed. The research for both mastery goals and performance approach goals is in conflict with regards to academic outcomes; the findings for performance approach goals have also been inconsistent in term of persistence. If you remember, those students displaying a performance approach orientation were less likely to persist with a task once the going got tough and much of the research supports this view. However, while in many studies those performance-approach students were more likely to withdraw or opt out of a task and to withdraw their time and energy after experiencing failure, other studies found no significant relationship between performance-approach orientation and effort. Just to make things even more complicated, Elliot found a positive relationship between performance-approach goals, effort and persistence.

The main problem we face is that there appears to be no strong relations between performance-approach orientations and achievement. There is certainly and emotional component at play and this could provide us with a way to reconcile these findings. It appears that while some learners are able to successfully regulate possible debilitating emotions, others are unable to do so, leading to less effort and persistence and the feeling that the task is somehow unworthy of their efforts. Mastery-goal orientated learners are less likely to develop debilitating emotions because they view learning as a challenge and something to become skilled at – they view difficulty and challenge as a vital part of the learning process rather than something that exists in order to trick them or to reveal their incompetence to the world. They also see failure as part of the route they must take in order to reach the goals they have set for themselves. In their model of achievement emotions Diana Tyson, Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia and Nancy Hill proposed that mastery learners are more likely to evoke positive emotions due to the way they view difficult tasks; they don’t need to regulate debilitating negative emotions because such emotions are much less likely to arise.