Achievement goal orientation has been studied within education for many years, but the practical implications are frequently focused on K-12 students and classrooms and less often applied to established concepts within higher education. Prior research has connected the construct to student achievement, along with stress and anxiety that accompany the learning of challenging new material. This study uses achievement goal orientation as a context for exploring student engagement in postsecondary education, joining constructs from educational psychology and higher education. Data were drawn from over 8500 first-year and senior college students across 15 higher education institutions participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Using a series of ordinary least squares regression analyses, results indicate that students who employ a mastery-approach orientation are more likely to partake in a variety of engagement indicators, such as reflective and integrative learning, higher-order learning, quantitative reasoning, and student–faculty interaction. Performance-avoidance orientation generally showed a negative relationship with engagement indicators, while results for the performance-approach orientation were more mixed.

成就目标定向已在教育中进行了多年研究，但实际意义经常集中在K-12学生和课堂上，而很少应用于高等教育中已确立的概念。先前的研究已经将这种结构与学生的成就以及伴随挑战性新材料的学习而产生的压力和焦虑联系在一起。这项研究使用成就目标导向作为探索学生参与中学后教育的背景，并结合了教育心理学和高等教育的构架。数据来自参与全国学生参与度调查（NSSE）的15家高等教育机构的8500多名一年级和高级大学生。使用一系列普通的最小二乘回归分析，结果表明，采用精通方法的学生更有可能参与各种参与指标，例如反思性和综合性学习，高阶学习，定量推理以及师生互动。绩效避免取向通常与敬业度指标呈负相关关系，而绩效取向取向的结果则更为复杂。