ABSTRACT
Teachers can think about and organize academic tasks in a number of ways. Goal orientations represent the reasons that students report for engaging in academic tasks. Research indicates that it is beneficial to encourage students to hold mastery goals for academic tasks. A student who holds a performance-approach goal wants to appear more competent than other students at a task or in a particular subject area. Students’ cultural backgrounds will not only shape their personal interests in, and prior knowledge related to, various subject areas and topics, but also will be reflected in their preferences for different types of social interactions in school. The types of tasks that teachers provide for students can have an effect on their developing beliefs about their abilities. The sequencing and relative difficulty of tasks can sometimes lead to ability comparisons among students.
