Do achievement goals mediate the effect of classroom goal structures on adolescents’ emotional engagement?

Galand, Benoît [UCL] Baudoin, Noémie [UCL]

School is one of the main living places for adolescents. What they live, what they feel, could impact different aspects of their development (Eccles & Roeser, 2011). Recently, a growing number of studies attempt to identify factors influencing student emotional outcomes (Hascher, 2010). This rising interest is fueled by two main considerations. Some consider student emotional aspects as important per se for general well-being and academic adjustment. Others want to better understand the key role of emotional dimension in motivational and learning processes (Gonida, Voulala, & Kiosseoglou, 2009; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2004). Despite this increasing focus on emotional aspect, much remains to be done, especially to understand how to improve student emotional engagement (Dresel, Fasching, Steuer, Nitsche, & Dickhäuser, 2013; Turner, Meyer, & Schweinle, 2003). According to achievement goal theory (Kaplan & Maehr, 1999; Murayama & Elliot, 2009), a learning environment emphasizing a mastery goal structure is expected to sustain student emotional engagement by fostering the endorsement of mastery goals, while a learning environment emphasizing a performance goal structure – fostering the endorsement of performance goals – is expected to produce less positive outcomes. However the mediation effect of these goals in the relationship between classroom goal structures and emotional engagement has never been tested in a multilevel framework (Baudoin & Galand, 2017). This study aimed to test the effect of classroom goal structures on student emotional engagement and the mediation effect of individual achievement goals. Participants were 1232 adolescents (9th grade) from 72 classrooms. They completed a self-reported questionnaire about their emotional engagement at school, their achievement goals and their perceptions of classroom goal structures. Significant between-classroom variance in perceptions of goal structures, achievement goals and emotional engagement was observed. Students’ perceptions of goal structures were aggregated at the classroom level. Multilevel analyses showed that student emotional engagement was related to achievement goals at the individual level and to goal structures at the classroom-level. However, the effect of classroom goal structures was not mediated by individual achievement goals. These results highlight the relevance to consider simultaneously personal goals and classroom goal structures at the proper level of analysis. From a practical point of view, the findings suggest that teaching practices building a classroom mastery goal structure could be a leverage to sustain or improve adolescents’ emotional engagement at school, whatever the personal goals they endorsed.