Achievement goals for teaching as predictors of students' perceptions of instructional practices and students' help seeking and cheating

This study examined a new achievement-goal approach to teacher motivation by testing the predictions that mastery and ability-avoidance goals for teaching would predict students' reports of teacher support for and inhibition of question asking and help seeking, as well as students' help seeking and cheating. Surveys were completed by 53 teachers and 1287 students in Grades 7–9. Effect sizes from a set of HLM analyses were small, but confirmed that teacher mastery goals were associated with higher levels of perceived teacher support and lower levels of perceived teacher inhibition; the reverse was the case for teacher ability-avoidance goals. Thus, teacher mastery and ability-avoidance goals were associated with students' reports of positive versus negative instructional practices. Teacher ability-avoidance goals were associated with student cheating, but teacher achievement goals did not predict students' help seeking.