Creating instructional environments that keep students on TARGET: does your class encourage a performance climate or a mastery climate?(Report)

Teachers' instructional decisions, such as lesson goals, how students are grouped, or how students are recognized and evaluated, can affect their students' level of motivation related to physical activity. A physical educator's primary responsibility is to create a classroom environment that enhances motivation and encourages students to become fit and to learn motor skills. If the long-term goal in physical education is to help students become physically active throughout life, then one way to achieve this goal is to create instructional environments that foster positive attitudes and behaviors regarding healthy lifestyle choices.

This article describes the central role of the instructional situation (class climate) and how the structuring of this environment can influence the motivation processes of students. The information presented here is meant to encourage teachers to adopt a mastery climate in their classroom. The first portion of this article discusses two types of motivation climates (mastery and performance) used by teachers in their classroom, as well as the research findings associated with the impact of each of these climates on students' motivational and behavioral processes. The second part introduces a classroom structural framework (Epstein's [1989] TARGET), which can be used to help teachers organize their learning environments. The third part uses the TARGET framework to contrast mastery and performance climates. The fourth section describes strategies that teachers can use to design and implement a mastery climate in their classes. Fifth, student perceptions about the classroom climate, student skill level, role models, and media will be discussed, because these variables also affect the classroom setting. Lastly, this article provides a brief checklist that can help teachers to gauge their classroom environment (mastery, performance, or a combination of the two).

Motivational Climates and Research Findings

Teachers should pay close attention to the type of instructional environment they implement, because it will convey what they value and it will have motivational consequences for their students. According to Ames (1992c) there are two distinct types of motivational climates--mastery (task-involving) and performance (ego-involving)--and teachers can organize classroom activities to reflect one or both of these climate types. An arrangement of the classroom teaching environment (or motivational climate) that emphasizes effort, improvement, cooperation, and self referenced comparisons constitutes a task-involving or mastery climate. In this type of setting, students adopt positive achievement strategies, which include hard work, persistence at tasks, and the pursuit of challenging tasks (Ames & Archer, 1988). In contrast, when a classroom teaching environment stresses social comparison among competing students' then this setting is referred to as ego-involving or a performance climate. This type of setting produces students who have lower motivation levels, attribute failure to lack of ability, and choose to work only on tasks at which they can be successful (Ames & Archer, 1988).

When the motivational climate was studied in physical education settings, relational research (e.g., Carpenter & Morgan, 1999; Papaioannou, 1995; Parish & Treasure, 2003; Solmon, 1996; Treasure, 1997) indicated that students' perceptions of a mastery climate led to greater feelings of satisfaction, less boredom, higher perceived ability, increased intrinsic motivation, and increased persistence, especially at higher levels of task difficulty. Further, students in the mastery climate believed that both effort and ability contributed to success, as well as a positive attitude about physical education (Morgan, Sproule, Weigand, & Carpenter, 2005; Roberts, Treasure, & Conroy, 2007). In contrast, perceptions of a performance climate produced less enjoyment, greater boredom, belief that success was linked to ability and not to effort, and less positive attitudes about physical education (Morgan et al., 2005; Roberts et al., 2007).

Epstein's TARGET Framework

How should teachers organize their learning environment, and what structural features influence the motivational climate? Epstein (1989) identified six structural features (task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time) that can help teachers organize their instructional environments. These six features are known by the acronym TARGET. Basically, teachers can manipulate these six features to influence the motivational climate (teaching environment) in their classes to reflect either a mastery and/or a performance climate. The role of the teacher in these six structural features is to (1) identify the task(s) that their students will perform during class (task), (2) decide who will make the instructional decisions--the teacher, the students, or both (authority), (3) determine how rewards will be given (recognition), (4) designate how students will be grouped for activity (grouping), (5) determine how students will be assessed (evaluation), and (6) decide on the lesson's pace and the amount of time devoted to task completion (time).