Student Orientation Toward Achievement¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 4 claims (1 for, 3 mixed) · 4 studies (2 associational, 1 causal, 1 review), q2 · 1 of 4 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Students' motivation can be decomposed along two independent spectrums: how strongly they are motivated to approach success, and how strongly they are motivated to avoid failure (Bohlin, 2011). Crossing these two spectrums yields four student profiles, closely paralleling the approach/avoidance distinction in Goal Orientation Theory.

Success-oriented students are highly motivated to approach success and relatively unconcerned with avoiding failure. They are intrinsically motivated, desire mastery, and — distinctively — define success as being the best they can be, regardless of how others perform, rather than as outperforming peers.

Overstrivers are, like success-oriented students, driven to achieve success — but unlike them, they also fear failure, and are motivated to prove themselves by outperforming others. To maximize their odds, overstrivers may employ several strategies (Covington, 1984; Stipek, 2002): selecting easy tasks to guarantee success with little actual learning; deliberately maintaining low expectations so that any success looks impressive relative to the (artificially lowered) bar; rehearsing responses in advance to appear more able than they feel; excessive attention to detail and effort, often accompanied by frequent check-ins and feedback requests, stemming from self-doubt about their actual ability; and, in the worst case, cheating, chosen over asking for help because asking for help feels like admitting inability.

Failure-avoiding students are highly motivated to avoid failure but, unlike overstrivers, do not hold high expectations for success — they are avoiding not just failure itself but its associated costs (anxiety, criticism), and rather than learning to feel proud of successes, they learn mainly to feel relief at having avoided failure (Covington & Müeller, 2001). To avoid appearing incompetent, they use self-handicapping strategies (Covington, 1984; Covington & Beery, 1976): minimizing, avoiding, or withdrawing from participation; making excuses for poor performance or lack of effort; procrastinating; setting unattainable goals or selecting tasks so difficult that success becomes unlikely; and deliberately appearing not to try. Low-achieving students use more of these self-handicapping strategies than students who are already doing well (Leondari & Gonida, 2007) — the underlying logic is that failing despite real effort exposes low ability, whereas failing without effort lets the student attribute the failure to lack of effort rather than lack of ability. This creates a genuine bind, however: teachers tend to value effort, so withholding it risks its own negative consequences — criticism or punishment for not trying (Urdan et al., 1998; Weiner, 1994) — leaving these students caught between the risk of trying and failing versus the risk of visibly not trying at all.

Failure-accepting students are, unlike the other three profiles, motivated toward neither success nor away from failure — they have experienced significant failure and have come to accept it. They do not take credit for successes, believing success is determined by external, uncontrollable factors, yet they do blame themselves for failures, with each failure confirming a fixed lack of ability (Covington, 1984). This combination produces learned helplessness (see Self-Efficacy Theory): because of an external locus of control regarding success but an internal one regarding failure, these students believe they lack control over outcomes either way, making them the most difficult of the four profiles to motivate — positive reinforcement for successes does not work, and convincing them of future success is difficult (Ames, 1990; Covington & Omelich, 1985).

To protect a sense of self-worth, both failure-avoiding and failure-accepting students may discount the importance of school altogether (Harter, Whitesell, & Junkin, 1998), redirecting effort toward other domains (sports, creative pursuits, trade skills) or, in some cases, toward delinquent behavior (Stipek, 2002). Because these two profiles are the hardest to reach and the least likely to signal their struggle directly, identifying which students hold a failure-avoiding or failure-accepting orientation — rather than assuming disengagement is simple laziness — is an important diagnostic step before attempting to build more positive mastery behaviors.

Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

Enough observation of a student's actual strategies (not just outcomes) to distinguish, e.g., an overstriver's excessive rehearsal and detail-focus from a success-oriented student's genuine mastery orientation, or self-handicapping from simple low effort

Constraints¶

Positive reinforcement for successes is specifically documented as ineffective with failure-accepting students, since they attribute success to external causes rather than their own capability — a generic praise-based intervention will not reach this group [-M]
Self-handicapping strategies (procrastination, deliberate low effort, choosing unrealistically hard or easy tasks) can look identical to simple disengagement from the outside, risking misdiagnosis and mistargeted intervention

Target Learners¶

Overstrivers, whose visible high achievement can mask fragile, fear-driven motivation and a real risk of burnout or cheating under pressure
Failure-avoiding and failure-accepting students specifically, since these two profiles are the ones teachers are most likely to overlook or misread as unmotivated rather than self-protecting

Target Learning Objectives¶

Shifting failure-avoiding and failure-accepting students toward more positive mastery behaviors and an internal, controllable sense of agency over outcomes
Reducing self-handicapping behaviors that directly suppress learning opportunities (withdrawal, procrastination, deliberate non-effort)

Theory¶

Supporting¶

Goal Orientation Theory [+S] — this typology's approach/avoidance-of-failure axis directly parallels goal orientation theory's own approach/avoidance dimension
Self-Efficacy Theory [+S] — the failure-accepting profile is this typology's clearest instance of learned helplessness
Attribution Theory [+S] — failure-accepting students' external-success/internal-failure attribution pattern is a direct application of attribution theory's locus dimension

Claims¶

Goal Orientation Theory — success-oriented students closely resemble a mastery-approach orientation; overstrivers resemble performance-approach mixed with performance-avoidance; failure-avoiding students resemble performance-avoidance and failure-avoidant goals directly
Self-Efficacy Theory — failure-accepting students' learned helplessness is this theory's own central failure mode
Attribution Theory — the typology's four profiles differ systematically in their attributions for success and failure

Examples¶

Key Sources¶

Bohlin, L. (2011). Student motivation orientation [Figure]. In Educational Psychology.
Covington, M. V. (1984). The self-worth theory of achievement motivation: Findings and implications. The Elementary School Journal, 85(1), 5-20.
Stipek, D. J. (2002). Motivation to learn: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
Covington, M. V., & Müeller, K. J. (2001). Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation: An approach/avoidance reformulation. Educational Psychology Review, 13(2), 157-176.
Covington, M. V., & Beery, R. (1976). Self-worth and school learning. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Leondari, A., & Gonida, E. (2007). Predicting academic self-handicapping in different age groups: The role of personal achievement goals and social goals. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(3), 595-611.
Urdan, T., Midgley, C., & Anderman, E. M. (1998). The role of classroom goal structure in students' use of self-handicapping strategies. American Educational Research Journal, 35(1), 101-122.
Weiner, B. (1994). Integrating social and personal theories of achievement striving. Review of Educational Research, 64(4), 557-573.
Ames, C. (1990). Motivation: What teachers need to know. Teachers College Record, 91(3), 409-421.
Covington, M. V., & Omelich, C. L. (1985). Ability and effort valuation among failure-avoiding and failure-accepting students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(4), 446-459.
Harter, S., Whitesell, N. R., & Junkin, L. J. (1998). Similarities and differences in domain-specific and global self-evaluations of learning-disabled, behaviorally disordered, and normally achieving adolescents. American Educational Research Journal, 35(4), 653-680.
Arduini-Van Hoose, N. (2020). Student orientation toward achievement. In Educational psychology. Retrieved from https://edpsych.pressbooks.sunycreate.cloud. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`theory`
`title`	`Student Orientation Toward Achievement`
`description`	`Covington's self-worth typology classifies students by how they combine motivation to approach success with motivation to avoid failure, yielding four profiles — success-oriented, overstriving, failure-avoiding, and failure-accepting — with different strategies and different degrees of self-handicapping.`
`status`	`review`
`canonical`	`True`
`generated`	by `claude/unspecified` on `2026-08-29`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content

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