Students’, teachers’ and parents’ achievement goals in Italian and Mathematics

This study investigated the role of students’ and relevant adults’ goals for achievement in two specific subject-matters, Italian and Mathematics. We considered that culture can mediate the relationships between goals and achievement – promoting a research study in the Italian context – and that these relationships can be modulated by characteristics of specific contexts, such as those associated to different subject-matters, and the goals attributed to relevant adults. The main aims were to investigate – taking into account the role of age, genre and subject-matter (Italian, Mathematics): (a) the relationship between students’ achievement goals (mastery goals, performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals) and students’ perception of teachers’ and parents’ goals; (b) the relationship between the mentioned goals and academic achievement. The participants were 435 Italian students, aged 10, 13 and 17 years. They completed a 64-item questionnaire, related to Italian for half of them and to Mathematics for the other half. Regression analyses were run. On the whole, the present study suggested that – with variations related to age but not to genre – personal goals are linked to the perception of the same goals in relevant adults, such as teachers and parents. However, students’ mastery goals play the strongest role in relation to academic achievement, supporting several findings reported in the literature.