Examination of achievement goals and social goals of college students at different levels of expertise

Goal theory postulates that learners have both academic and social reasons for pursuing academic outcomes. In domain-learning theory, the development of expertise is domain specific and is a progressive learning process that is characterized by the interplay of knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. This study integrated goal theory and domain-learning theory by investigating relations among domain knowledge, interest, strategic processing, achievement goals, social goals, and academic achievement of 141 college undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses. The purpose of this study was twofold: to explore the relations between goal orientations and achievement of students at different levels of expertise and to determine whether unique and informative student goal profiles would emerge from achievement goals and social goals. Data consisted of participants' knowledge of psychology, interest in psychology, and their self-reported learning strategy use, achievement goal orientations, and social goal orientations. As a result of cluster-analytic procedures, two distinct levels of expertise emerged (i.e., Acclimated and Competent) from knowledge, interest, and strategic processing measures specific to psychology. The Acclimated group endorsed performance-avoidance goals and the Competent group endorsed mastery, performance-approach, and social concern goals, indicating students at different levels of expertise have different reasons for achieving. Results also provided support for the multiple goal perspective by indicating mastery and performance-approach goals were significantly, positively related to interest, strategic processing, and psychology GPA. Social goals were generally negatively related to academic outcomes, suggesting that social goal may be maladaptive for college students. Finally, two student goal profiles emerged from achievement and social goal measures (i.e., Single Goal, Combined Goal). Findings indicated the goal profiles differed on components related to the development of expertise in psychology, with the Combined Goal group reporting higher interest in psychology and higher strategic processing than the Single Goal group.