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UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION 79ing their own learning when the tasks are demanding and when their
initial efforts do not result in success. These challenges often lead to
early failure in college. The problem, however, is that early failure
often doesn’t shock the college students into realizing that they must
do something to change their behavior. Instead, they resist changing
their learning and study strategies (Hattie, Bioss, & Purdue, 1996).
Freshmen often fail to recognize that success in many college
courses requires critical thinking skills: the ability to organize argu-
ments and evidence from many sources that often disagree with one
another. In his interview with college students, Light (2001) found
that students who had academic difficulty pointed out that their high
school courses did not demand much critical thinking, but in college
courses it is an important skill for success. When students have diffi-
culty in courses that require critical thinking skills, they often blame
or attribute their poor results to the instructor, such as expressed in
the following statement: “I always did well in high school. I can’t
believe these tests; they are so unfair.” What often occurs are expla-
nations for failure that can be categorized as external attributions—
usually the teacher or the test—not oneself. In high school, if failure
occurred, it was the teacher who was asked to change. Common
requests include: “Slow down,” “Explain it again,” “Be more con-
cise,” “Give me examples,” and “Make the test easier.” Isaacson
(2002) stated that blaming others by attributing the responsibility for
lower academic success or failure on others influences the student not
to take personal responsibility and take charge of his or her own
learning. Thus, when an opportunity presents itself, like taking a
learning strategies course in college, the students fail to recognize how
it can help because they may not recognize that they are responsible
for their own academic outcomes: What was your attitude when you
registered for this course? Do you think you need to change any aspect
of your learning and study behavior? Do any of the beliefs described
in this section relate to your thinking? If not, explain why your atti-
tudes or beliefs are different and what factors influenced your open-
ness for the possibility of changing some of your own study behaviors?
In this chapter, I identified two major goal orientations–mastery and
performance. In a mastery orientation, a person wants to learn as
much as possible and improve one’s academic performance. In a per-
formance orientation, a person wants to perform better than others,
or as one student put it: “I simply want to get through this course.”
Adopting a performance orientation and simply wanting to “get
through courses” may cause students to lower their value for a study
skills course, resulting in disinterest and an unwillingness to acquire
and practice self-directed learning skills. A person with a mastery ori-
entation is more likely to use advanced rather then simple rehearsal
strategies in their courses. Therefore, your goal orientation may be a