The Motivation of High School Students by Achievement Goals

Abstract The present study aimed to identify, describe and analyze the achievement goals of 207 high school students in a city in São Paulo state. The instruments were the Characterization Questionnaire and Achievement Goals Questionnaire. The results indicate a major tendency to adopt the mastery-approach goal, where the student engages the activity with the purpose of developing their skills. The second more adopted goal was performance-avoidance goal, in which students tend to want to show their skills to others not to appear incompetent for them. These results above may be related to a great intension of students in completing the high school and enter the University, results also found in this study. Comprehend Achievement Goals can contribute to understanding the quality of motivation that the students apply in their activities.