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Lecture Information:  Performance Goals

1. Comparison Orientation:
   Again like the learning goal orientation, students with performance goals have a fairly simple approach, but with a fairly profound difference.  Where as a student with a mastery orientation simply wants to learn more, a student with a comparison orientation wants to be the best in the social group, which is usually their class.  They seek to secure respect among classmates through superior performance.  This type of student can be good for the class but more often have a divisive effect on the class.  In order to be the best, they often take a rather obvious pleasure in pointing out the faults in other students' work.
2. "Ego-Involved" Learner's Characteristics:
   1. Risk-Avoiders:
      These students hate to take risks that might prove somehow embarrassing.  They would rather not try than be shown inferior to someone else.  This is the kid who refuses to try, or is obviously loafing on a project, and when you, as the teacher press them to try harder they say things like, "This is stupid," a "dumb idea," or somehow beneath them.
   2. Criticism:
      These students are the ones who hate to turn in their assignments, mostly because, "You always find something WRONG!"  You take this student to the school's pool and give them feedback like, "Look out for the curvature of the depths," and they crumple their papers, break their pencils and throw it all into the water.  You try to tell them that you're only trying to help them improve their effort and they say something like, "I don't need any help!"
   3. Competitive:
      While the whole class needs a certain book as a reference for a semester's big assignment, this student will get to the library early enough to check out the book for the whole semester and not tell anyone else. This type of student looks at the situation and thinks what is in it for me to share the resource with everyone else.  If they finish a proof before everyone else they let everyone else know that they are finished already.
   4. Parades Successes/Hides Failures:
      This student tends to let everyone know what their grade is when it was a perfect paper.  They very sympathetically walk over to a classmate that didn't do so well and say something like, "Gee, I'm so sorry that you didn't do so well.  I thought it was really easy.  I wonder what happened?"  If this student doesn't do so well they will say that they didn't really try, or it was a trick test, or the teacher doesn't like me.  There's always some excuse that places the blame on someone or something else.
   5. Likely to Cheat:
      This student only has being best in the class as their goal not necessarily learning the most.  They will come up with short cuts, cheat sheets, or end runs around the grading scheme, and anything else to have the appearance of being at the top of the class.  Keep in mind, they have their ego on the line with their performance in class.  They can do some pretty desperate things to protect that.