ientation of students. As mentioned earlier, researchers have identified three types of motivational goals adopted by students in learning settings. Students who pursue task mastery goals are intrinsically motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills. For them, learning is the end in itself. In contrast, ego-social goal-oriented students are motivated to learn simply to outperform their peers and demonstrate their ability to others. These students pursue learning as a means to an end. The final category of students with work-avoidant goals describe those who are unwilling to invest effort or thought into their school work (Miller & Meece, 1997; Self-Brown & Mathews, 2003; Stefanou & Parkes, 2003).
In their research study involving eight teachers and 187 third-grade students from one suburban school, Miller and Meece (1997) investigated the impact of using reading and language arts assignments that required complex thought (in lieu of lower-level thinking), peer collaboration a
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