Progress-focused

One of the most influential papers by Carol Dweck and her colleagues is the Mueller & Dweck (1998) paper entitled Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance . Over the years, this study has been criticized or disputed from various quarters, sometimes largely justified , sometimes largely unjustified. Knowing these criticisms, I argue that Mueller & Dweck (1998) is a classic publication that has lost little or nothing of importance. Here you can read a brief description of that research.

In this article I described research which shows that choosing mastery goals predicts intrinsic motivation. Based on that research I concluded that it is wise for parents and teachers to encourage students to choose mastery goals (vs. performance goals). A new study by Duchesne et al. (2016) suggests an effective way to do this. That way is: create the conditions in which the  basic psychological needs (of autonomy, competence, and relatedness) of students are satisfied.

An important distinction in psychology is the distinction between mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals are goals which focus on learning new knowledge and skills. Performance goals are about achieving and competing for outcomes. This distinction is important for education. Should you focus on teaching students to set mastery goals or is it wiser to teach them to set performance goals? What works better?