Learning Goals and Performance Goals:

Goal Setting in Formal Education and Sports

Ilya Orlov

OISE, University of Toronto

Special Topics in Applied Psychology and Human Development –

Maximizing Learning: Understanding How Individuals and Groups Learn Best

Teachers and educators play an important role in enhancing the knowledge of the

students they work with. Improvement of knowledge is done through setting goals which are

then measured by grades. Should teachers focus on the final grade or should they emphasize the

process of learning? Is one type of goal more important than the other or are both learning and

performance goals important to set? How do we combine both together to enhance the

development of students?

Attaining “success” by achieving high grades is the outcome that most students strive for.

However, based on the research that will be presented, the emphasis should be on the process

that teachers implement in their classroom that will help their students improve their learning.

Two main goals can be distinguished: performance (outcomes) goals and learning (process)

goals. Performance goals can be defined as goals to increase the productivity or achievement of a

student. In a performance goal, the objective is described with the final outcome or comparing

one student’s achievement to another. In contrast, a learning goal is described as a process in

terms of knowledge or skill acquisition. In other words, improvement of the students’ thinking

and the manner with which they acquire new knowledge is important. The attention shifts away

from the end result and towards the process of discovery (Seijts & Latham, 2005). A key aspect

of setting learning goals is the emphasis on effort, allowing students to make mistakes and

correcting the mistakes to achieve a learning outcome. Learning is not looked at as a final

destination but a continuous and evolving process.

I currently work as a soccer coach at the University of Toronto. I have to set goals with

our team at the beginning of the season and reflect on these goals throughout the season. Some of

these goals are performance goals and some of them are learning goals. The rational for choosing
this topic is to be able to set better goals, as a coach (educator), to help the teams and players that

I coach improve their abilities. The questions that I want to ask in this paper are: a) should

coaches set learning or performance goals and if both are important; b) how should I set these

goals, in combination, to optimize the motivation and learning of the players and teams I coach?

The paper will focus on two main sections. Firstly, we will look at the research and

literature on goal setting with emphasis on performance and learning goals and how they can be

applied by an educator. In this section I will evaluate, analyze, and comment on the research

findings and examine contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature. We will look at

how we can combine the two goals, based on the literature, to optimize the goal setting process.

Secondly, I will discuss the implication for myself as soccer coach and I will look at the lessons

learned from the research. I will reflect and analyze how I have previously implemented goal

setting and lessons I can learn for the future.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is the process of forming clear targets and objectives for learning. Goal

Theory suggests that there are two general goal orientations students can create. The first is a

task-focused orientation which involves learning goals where the student is intrinsically focused

on learning and improving. The other goal orientation involves extrinsic motivation which

emphasizes performance or the outcome. Extrinsic rewards may include good grades or

comparing oneself with others and trying to achieve more than someone else (Black & Wiliam,

1998).

Teachers play a significant role in helping students in setting goals. The role of the

teacher is to give feedback to students and also provide guidance for the future (feed-forward).

Teachers’ feedback should be intended to close the gap between current performance and
potential future performance by offering direction about how to reduce the gap (Black & Wiliam,

1998). Therefore, teachers play an important role when helping students set goals and reflect on

those goals. If the teacher understands the intricacies of appropriate goal setting, they can

provide appropriate feedback to help students attain their desired goals, whether the goal is a

performance or learning goal. If the teacher does not help the student set the correct goals or is

not involved in the process of setting the goals then they will not be able to guide the learning

experience for the students.

An important component of goal setting is that the students must be able to plan their

own goals, with the guidance of the teacher. The student must feel autonomy when setting goals.

Research has demonstrated that student autonomy is a long-term aim of education and this can

only be achieved when the student has control when deciding their own goals (Candy, 1988).

Now that we have an understanding of goal setting and its importance for both teachers and

students, we can look at the performance and learnings goals in more detail.

Performance Goals

Performance goals can be defined as goals that are focused on achieving a desired

outcome. When it comes to performance goals there can be a focus on how the student will be

judged and their ability to complete a given task (Moeller et al. 2012). Performance goals can be

further divided and contrasted into two categories: striving to attain success, meaning an

emphasis on performance versus striving to avoid failure meaning performance avoidance

(Lacaille et al.2005).

Performance goals have been described as being detrimental to performance and less

likely to result in positive outcomes as compared to learning goals. However, studies completed

in the educational field propose that both learning and performance goals are helpful to
performers. The negative outcomes of performance goals result more from performance

avoidance as compared to performance goals that strive to achieve success (Lacaille et al. 2005).

McGregor and Elliot (2002) found that both learning goals and performance goals were related

to positive processes. The benefits of both types of goals among students preparing for

examinations were challenge appraisals, task engagement, and grade aspirations. In contrast,

performance avoidance goals were linked to negative processes such as threat appraisals and

anxiety.

There are also negative aspects to setting high performance goals. It has been shown that

it can affect a person's desire to draw upon present knowledge and skills to become a high

performer. As a result, studies show that performance goals influences choice, effort, and

persistence. All three are important factors when it comes to motivation. Setting a challenging

performance goal can have a negative outcome on a person's effectiveness in the initial stages of

learning. This is because in the initial stages of learning, before effective performance routines

have been acknowledged and have become automatic, a person's attention needs to be focused on

discovering and mastering the processes required to perform well in given task, rather than on

the achievement of a specific level of performance. A performance outcome goal can distract

attention from the discovery of the task and the learning process (Seijts & Latham, 2005).

Learning Goals

Learning goals involve accomplishing set out tasks that involve mastery (Elliott &

Dweck, 1988). They nurture a motivational pattern related to a deeper level of engagement that

creates and maintains achievement behavior. This deeper level of engagement encourages

internalization of the connection between effort and achievement (Weiner, 1979). One of the

more famous theories that helps explain the benefits of learning goals is the Self-Determination
Theory. The theory suggests that intrinsic motivation is the highest form of autonomous

motivation. Intrinsic motivation has stronger positive relationships with success compared to

extrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Learning goals are more focused on the process then

strictly attempting to accomplish a performance goal. Therefore, autonomy and self-regulation

are important components of learning goals. One reason for this is that the student has control

over the process of learning and does not rely on extrinsic rewards to judge their progress.

Many experts in the education field promote learning goals over performance goals.

However, there are gaps in the research and possible drawbacks to using strictly learning goals.

In a study by Jiang and Elen (2011) looking at the effects of goal setting on students’ learning

processes and learning outcomes, it was hypothesized that students who had access to learning

goals would perform better than students who did not receive learning goals. However, the study

failed to support these hypotheses. Students studying with learning goals did not outperform

those without access to learning goals. It was shown that students’ behaviour and cognitive

processes did not successfully transfer to the desired cognitive processes. The study suggests that

it is important that learning goals should not only specify what students were expected to learn,

but also explain which cognitive activities students should carry out in a specific context (Jiang

& Elen, 2011). In other words, learning goals are what students should emphasize but how they

should go about it was not taught or explained.

Based on the above findings it possible to speculate that learning goals on their own are

not enough to create a direction of learning for the student. It can therefore be beneficial to use

both performance goals and learning goals together when teachers set goals for students. As

mentioned above, performance goals can increase task engagement and improve aspiration of

the student to achieve a goal. Learning goals can be used as intrinsic motivation and to assess
improvement along the way. I would suggest that performance goals are “what” students want to

achieve and learning goals are the steps of “how” they will achieve the performance goals. The

emphasis, for teachers, should be on setting learning goals but using performance goals as a

guide to avoid getting off track during the learning process. Both performance and learning goals

have to be malleable. They can be adjusted during the process to best fit the improvement and

development of the student.

My Career

I am currently the Head Coach of the University of Toronto Men’s and Women’s Soccer

teams. Coaching is very similar to being a teacher in a formal education setting. Therefore, the

education that teachers acquire throughout their schooling process is similar in many respects to

those that coaches require in their profession.

Part of the process for our soccer teams is to set goals for the team as a whole and for

each individual player. As the research shows, individual personal goals are important but

creating team goals is essential for increasing team cohesion and subsequent performance

(Widmeyer & Ducharme, 1997). As mentioned in this paper, both performance and learning

goals provide direction that leads to a change in behavior at a group level by providing increased

motivation, effort, cooperation and promote team improvement (Widmeyer & Ducharme, 1997).

Part of coaching is also setting goals for training and competition. Unlike some of the

research in the academic sphere, research in sport settings has shown that both practice (learning

goals) and competition (performance) goals are equally effective, even though the function of the

goals differ. Goal setting, in training sessions, emphasizes more on learning new tactics and

techniques (Munroe-Chandler et al., 2004). Athletes are more likely to set process (learning) and

performance goals in practice, whereas during competition, performance goals appear to be more
effective (Widmeyer & Ducharme, 1997). I would argue against this and propose that for

competition, both learning and performance goals are equally important. This can be especially

significant for younger children who are participating in sport. For young athletes, just as

students in classrooms, competition or games are a tool for learning. This where they get to test

out what they learned. As well, they can then reflect on their match performance and use the

learnings for future improvement. Similarly, in a formal classroom setting, tests or exams should

be viewed as a tool for learning and not a way to strictly judge the children’s competence level.

My Three Steps in Goal Setting

I use a three step process for goal setting in my coaching. They include goal setting

before the season, assessing the goals during the season and reflecting on the goals after the

season. I will use the lessons from the research in this paper to discuss how I can improve the

three steps to optimize goal setting for my teams and players.

Goal Setting

Before the season, the team and I set our goals for the season ahead. These are usually

only outcomes goals. For example, make the playoffs, win the Ontario Championship and win

the National Championship. However, reflecting back on the research in this paper, I do not

explicitly explain the learning goals to achieve these performance goals. In other words, we have

an idea of “what” we want to accomplish but no specific methods of “how” we will accomplish

this. Understanding learning from the research described in this paper, I would still mention our

performance goals but also specify learning goals that we need to achieve to help our

performance goals. These would lead to intrinsic motivation for the players and a way to check

for improvement from my perspective to see if players are improving and learning. Individuals

have their own performance goals they want to achieve outside of the team goals. As a coach it is
about setting explicit, clear and specific learning goals for players to be better able to assess their

individual progress and provide them autonomy.

In-Season Reflection/Improvement

Having set clear learning goals that are expressed before the season, these goals can then

be used as objective tools to measure progress. Is the team achieving gradual improvement

during the season towards the performance goals? If yes, then we will keep going as is, if no,

then the learning goals may need to be reassessed to see why they are not being achieved. This

has to do with the ability of the coach (teacher) to help the players (students) critically reflect.

The players themselves have to be able to reflect on their own learning and progress but I, as the

coach, have to be able to properly assess and set challenges for players to enhance their learning.

I personally like to use an idea similar to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. The zone

is the space between the student’s current level of knowledge or skills and the level of potential

development which can be improved by helping them problem-solve with adult guidance. When

a task is too difficult for a player (student) to solve on their own, the player can be guided by

someone older with a higher level of knowledge, this can be a coach, teacher or peer (Boyd,

Johnson, & Bee, 2020). The performance goal is still our guide but it is the learning goals that

are the emphasis for improvement.

Post-Season Reflection and Assessment

After the season, I reflect if the team has achieved their performance goals. Based on the

research in this paper, it would make more sense to start by analyzing if the team and individual

players have met their learning goals and then the performance goals. Performance goals are not

always in the control of the team or players as there are multiple external factors that can

interrupt the attainment of the performance goals. However, learning goals are in our control and
are driven by intrinsic factors such as effort and reflection.

Therefore, in the future when I have a post-season meeting with the players, I would use

the learning goals set out at the beginning of the season as the starting point for the conversation

and see if they have been achieved. I would then look at the performance goals and if they have

been achieved. I would hypothesize that if most of the learning goals have been achieved then

the performance goals would have a higher chance of being accomplished as well. It is about the

process and not always about the final destination.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education:

Principles, Policy & Practice, 5, 7–74. doi:10.1080/0969595980050102

Boyd, D. R., Bee, H., L & Johnson, P.A., (2021). Revel for Lifespan Development. Toronto:

Pearson Canada.

Candy, P. (1988). On the attainment of subject-matter autonomy. In D. Boud (Ed.), Developing

student autonomy in learning (2nd ed., pp. 59–76). London: Kogan Page

Elliott, E. S., & Dweck, C. S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and

achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 5-12.

doi:https://doiorg.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1037/0022-3514.54.1.5

Jiang, L., & Elen, J. (2011). Why do learning goals (not) work: a reexamination of the

hypothesized effectiveness of learning goals based on students’ behaviour and cognitive

processes. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(4), 553–573.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-011-9200-y

Lacaille, Whipple, N., & Koestner, R. (2005). Reevaluating the Benefits of Performance Goals:

The Relation of Goal Type to Optimal Performance for Musicians and Athletes. Medical

Problems of Performing Artists, 20(1), 11–16. https://doi.org/10.21091/mppa.2005.1003

McGregor, H. A., & Elliot, A. J. (2002). Achievement goals as predictors of achievement

relevant processes prior to task engagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2),

381–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.94.2.381

Moeller, A. J., Theiler, J. M., & WU, C. (2012). Goal Setting and Student Achievement: A

Longitudinal Study. The Modern Language Journal (Boulder, Colo.), 96(2), 153–169.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01231.x
Munroe-Chandler, K. J., Hall, C. R., & Weinberg, R. S. (2004). A qualitative analysis of the

types of goals athletes set in training and competition. Journal of Sport Behavior, 27(1),

58–.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic

motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78.

Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2005). Learning versus Performance Goals: When Should Each

Be Used? The Academy of Management Executive (1993-2005), 19(1), 124131.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4166157

Widmeyer, W. N., & Ducharme, K. (1997). Team building through team goal setting. Journal of

Applied Sport Psychology, 9(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413209708415386

Weiner, B. (1979). A theory of motivation for some classroom experiences. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 71(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.71.1.3