Antecedents and trajectories of achievement goals: a self-determination theory perspective.

BACKGROUND: Research has shown that both achievement goal theory and self-determination theory (SDT) are quite useful in explaining student motivation and success in academic contexts. However, little is known about how the two theories relate to each other. AIM: The current research used SDT as a framework to understand why students enter classes with particular achievement goal profiles, and also, how those profiles may change over time. SAMPLE: One hundred and eighty-four undergraduate preservice teachers in a required domain course agreed to participate in the study. METHOD: Data were collected at three time points during the semester, and both path modelling and multi-level longitudinal modelling techniques were used. RESULTS: Path modelling techniques with 169 students, results indicated that students' autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction in life predict their initial self-determined class motivation, which in turn predicts initial mastery-approach and -avoidance goals. Multi-level longitudinal modelling with 108 students found that perceived teacher autonomy support buffered against the general decline in students' mastery-approach goals over the course of the semester. CONCLUSIONS: Data provide a promising integration of SDT and achievement goal theory, posing a host of potentially fruitful future research questions regarding goal adoption and trajectories.

Gender differences in academic entitlement among college students.

Researchers have labeled today's college students as perceiving themselves to be more entitled than ever before (J. M. Twenge, 2006). The results of the present study suggest that this may be true for college men, in particular, because they report significantly more academic entitlement than women do. In Study 1, the present authors used survey data from 1229 undergraduate students across 18 classes at a large midwestern university to examine whether entitlement beliefs vary among classes. Results indicate that men reported significantly more entitlement than women did, and that this relation did not vary among classes. In Study 2, the authors used survey data from 93 undergraduate students across 10 classes, before and after they completed a semester-long course, to examine whether entitlement beliefs are fostered in the college setting. The results suggest that men perceived themselves as more entitled in the classroom than women did and that this relation did not change over time. The authors also discuss the implications for entitlement research in the academic domain.