Academic Goal Orientation Pattern of Higher Education Students of West Bengal

Higher education students can achieve academic success depending on their motivation and success-oriented behavior in learning. Therefore, the way students approach learning and performance in pursuit of their academic goal play an important role in this process. This orientation can be found differently among the students as either mastery or performance-oriented behavior. This descriptive research aims to investigate the overall level and pattern of goal orientation of higher education students in West Bengal and also attempt to find out if there is any gender and family type-based difference in their mastery and performance orientation. Total 338 higher education students from different districts of the southern part of West Bengal have participated in this study, who were randomly selected. Goal orientation scale has been used to collect data and the results found that most of the students have moderate level of goal orientation. The researchers have identified four groups of goal orientation pattern with the majority falling into the multiple-goal group, followed by the mastery-oriented group, the disengaged group, and finally the performance-oriented group. From these, two distinct groups were selected for further analysis and the t-test results revealed no statistically significant differences in either Mastery Goal Orientation or Performance Goal Orientation across gender. However, a statistically significant difference was found for both Mastery Goal Orientation and Performance Goal Orientation across family type.