ABSTRACT
Psychologists study motivation to understand why people think and behave as they do. Applied to achievement contexts like classrooms, we would be addressing motivational concerns if we were to ask, for example: Why do some children persist to task completion despite enormous difficulty, while others give up at the slightest provocation? Why do some individuals believe that effort pays off and others do not? Or, what accounts for the fact that some children set such unrealistically high goals for themselves that failure is bound to occur?
