Achievement Goals: The Past Present, and Possible Future of Achievement Goal Research in the Context of Learning and Teaching

The achievement goal approach is a particularly prominent approach to study differences in motivation. Rooted in the works developed by seminal achievement goal theorists in the 1980s, a wealth of knowledge has been gained about the characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of goal pursuit. Beyond this, achievement goal research is continuously expanding, with multiple recent theoretical developments and accompanying empirical realizations. This chapter presents an overview of the origins of achievement goal research and noteworthy theoretical developments to explain (1) how achievement goals can be conceptualized, (2) which types of goals are distinguishable and relevant, and (3) how they are pursued. Within this chapter, a focus is placed on students and teachers, including systematic differences between different learning and teaching contexts and how they can contribute to answer open questions in achievement goal research. Special attention is also paid to key emerging lines of research in the literature, including reasons behind goals and goal complexes, multiple goal pursuit and goal profiles, and generality and specificity of goal pursuit—paired with a discussion of the relevance of these issues for the design of empirical studies and the operationalisation of achievement goals.