Abstract:

To examine the effect of competence feedback and fear of failure on high school students’ achievement goal regulation under the context of Chinese culture, this study surveyed 261 students’ achievement goals before the exam and then investigated the fear of failure (FF) as well as achievement goal again after the exam, which was a monthly comprehensive examination including several different subjects. The competence feedback was represented by the students’ level of satisfaction with their total exam grade.Cluster analysis were used to explore the potential goal profiles and each profile were studied separately. Five different achievement goal profiles were identified, goal profile with both high mastery goal and performance-approach goal were the most stable, which stayed unaffected by competence feedback. Positive feedback increased some students’ mastery goal, while negative feedback decreased some students’ performance-avoidance goal. Students with low performance-orientation increased their performance-approach goal after receiving negative feedback, demonstrating a tendency towards multiple goals. High FF individuals tended to maintain a high performance-approach goal as well as a performance-avoidance goal and increase their mastery goal. Positive feedback decreased the performance-avoidance goal of high FF students.

Keywords:

Achievement goal regulation, Goal profile, Competence feedback, Fear of failure