ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on social goals within learning environments. It presents areas of future research for the given social goal and context. The book provides a more general discussion of future areas of social goal research and a brief discussion of what social goal research might entail in the year 2040. It describes the state of social goal research, while urging the field toward a much richer understanding of students’ social goals. Social goals can include, but are not limited to, making friends, developing prosocial behaviors, becoming popular, and socially controlling the classroom. Social goals lead to a range of outcomes from affecting academic performance to bullying classmates. Social goal research stands at a crossroads. As social goals present themselves inside schools, social goals might be specific to the given context in which the goal appears.
