Context-specific achievement goal orientations in cooperative group work

•The relative contribution of group related goal orientations on outcomes were examined.•During group work, group related goals predicted outcome variables strongly and positively.•Different kinds of mastery goals predicted positive group work experiences.•Group related performance-approach goals predicted positive group work experiences.•Individual performance-approach goals predicted negative group work experiences.

This study explored how trichotomous achievement goal orientations in each of three contexts (i.e., individual, individual-within-a-group, and group; Kim, Kim, & Svinicki, 2012) play different roles in predicting college students' enjoyment, sense of group community, and evaluation of group work processes during laboratory cooperative group work. We asked 174 undergraduate students to complete individual and group-related achievement goal orientation measures before and after participating in group work. The results indicated that individual and group-related achievement goal orientations in a cooperative group work setting strongly predicted the affective and cognitive variables and that these associations varied among the goals. For example, both individual-within-a-group performance-approach goal orientations and group performance-approach goal orientations were positively associated with the related affective and cognitive variables, whereas individual performance-approach goal orientations were negatively associated with those variables. Implications for current achievement goal orientation theory in a cooperative group work context are discussed.