Do achievement goals mediate the relationship between classroom goal structures and student emotions at school?

ABSTRACT

It is expected that teacher practices could improve students’ emotional state by encouraging the endorsement of adaptive goals. However, the mediation effect of achievement goals in the relationship between classroom goal structures and emotions has never been demonstrated empirically. This study therefore investigated this important issue using a multilevel framework, which is more appropriate for testing contextual effects. The participants were 1,232 students (9th grade) from 72 classrooms. They completed a self-reported questionnaire about their emotions at school, their achievement goals and their perceptions of classroom goal structures. Multilevel analysis showed that students’ anger, anxiety, and enjoyment were related to goal structures at classroom level. Only the effects of mastery goal structure on anger and enjoyment were mediated by students’ mastery goals. These results highlight the relevance of simultaneously considering personal goals and classroom goal structures using multilevel models. From a practical point of view, these findings mainly support the relevance of classroom mastery goal structure to improve students’ emotional well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• classroom environment
• learning environment
• adolescent
• school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Noémie Baudoin

Noémie Baudoin, PhD, is a researcher at UCLouvain – Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences. Her main research interest is to study how school environment and teachers instructional practices are related to student motivation and well-being.

Benoît Galand

Benoît Galand, PhD, is a full professor at UCLouvain – Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences. His major research interests include motivation and engagement, school violence and bullying, and teaching practices.