ALYSA C

I work in an elementary school in Linden, New Jersey. My school serves students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. We also have an extensive special education program for all grades. I have been a part of this school’s team for almost two years. From what I have observed, my school is more oriented toward mastery goals for students. According to Dr. Jennifer Banas, mastery goals foster a host of adaptive outcomes that lead to developing new skills, reaching understanding, improving competence, and achieving self-referenced standards (American College of Education, 2021). I teach in an autistic classroom. For my students, my paraprofessionals and I work to develop new skills and practice old skills with our students. We work to master the old skills that they have learned in the previous year or at the beginning of the school year. Then, we slowly start to introduce new skills that are beneficial to our students. I believe that our school, and specifically the special education department, believes in mastery goals more than performance goals because we want each student to focus on themselves. If we focused on performance goals, then students would always be searching for validation and think that everything is a competition with their peers. 

A school can increase its emphasis on mastery goal orientation in a variety of ways. Giving students choices is one of the most successful strategies to use when developing mastery goal orientation. If we give students choices and control of their learning, they are inclined to feel more motivated to master skills. Another strategy to use is the emphasis on learning from mistakes. Many students are afraid to make mistakes and develop anxiety because of it. To encourage learning from mistakes, teachers can provide the opportunity to earn back points students have lost by fixing their mistakes and learning from them (Svinicki). When emphasising mastery goal orientation, it is also important to give positive feedback that targets personal achievement. Instead of saying what is wrong, teachers should provide insight on how to fix mistakes. This strategy is important so students are focused on themselves and not the achievement of others. 

MATHEW B

What are the differences between mastery goals and performance goals? Mastery goals and performances goals are defined by two different definitions. According to Banas (2021), performance goals are goals that focus on ability and self-worth requiring outperforming others and gaining public recognition. Mastery goals are defined as goals that develop new skills, understanding, competence, and self-reference achievement with adaptive outcomes. In reflecting about my school, I believe my school has started to turn toward becoming a mastery goal school, and moving away from a performance goal school. Over the last few years, our school community has started to focus more on intrinsic motivation through relationship building, which is an essential tool in my practice. With this in mind, students feel more included in their environment through safe and positive practices due to staff activity. This has started to lead to more mastery performances as teachers begin to see the potential students have in building those relationships. Not only are we building positive relationships with our students, but we are also using the backwards planning model during Professional Learning Community, PLC, time. We discuss the tasks students need to perform and carefully comb through lessons to investigate how the unit breaks down the skills.  

A school can increase emphasis on mastery goal orientation with a few techniques. The first technique is to make learning meaningful (Banas, 2021). Students need to know why they are learning the concept and how that is relevant in real life. For example, when teaching multiplication in my classroom, we begin the discussions with where multiplication is used in the real world. Showing students that multiplication is used when purchasing grocery items shows them that math exists in every day events. Another technique to increase mastery goal orientation is to use scaffolding during instructional time. Scaffolding works with an “I Do/We Do/You Do” mindset, in that we are moving the students toward independence by relying less on the teacher and more on their confidence. Last, a school should be culturally responsive with a multicultural perspective. Incorporate the needs, values and interests of the student (Banas, 2021). A school, or teacher, should keep in mind what is hindering the student to be successful in the classroom. Culturally, there may be hurdles that are unforeseen. These hurdles can affect the success of the student. As a teacher, it is important to be aware of our student’s cultural upbringing as we help them move toward mastery. These are some of the techniques that schools can use to emphasize mastery goal oritentation.

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