ProfMaggie K
morticia3999
discussion_for_maggie.docxDiscussion 1 Charles
Thinking about goals in terms of learning versus performance can have drastically different outcomes in terms of performance and success. I think that when thinking about achieving goals it is important to think about oneself in terms of personal fulfillment. If it means that “looking good” is what’s most important, maybe in the fashion industry or entertainment, standing out in terms of performing well is important. However, in scholastic achievement, or in many careers, it is the value of learning that can be most important, depending on what one’s personal goals are. If someone is in school to socialize and scholastic achievement is secondary, a person may be quite pleased if they receive average grades but “look good” and stand out socially. But if another person is more focused on excelling and achieving in terms of advancing in knowledge in a subject and believes that they can excel by learning and studying, that person is more oriented towards learning goals, whereas the social student is more interested in performance goals (Cervone & Pervin, 2016).
In the TED talk by Carol Dweck, she mentions how the idea of “not yet,” allows students to realize that they can have learning goals. I think as children grow older however, they may find that how they appear to others is more important than getting good grades. So it may be unpopular to get good grades and being a high achiever may be considered “nerdy.” I find this interesting because it really becomes a matter of social molding and modeling for children and many people in general. If someone looks to someone like Albert Einstein, as a cliché example, they may become more oriented to learning goals. If another person wants to be like Kim Kardashian, they are probably more interested in performance goals. I think it really depends on the type of success a person is interested in when it comes to performance versus learning goals. In general, adapting learning goals I believe allows a person to become more adept at achieving success.
“Reciprocal determinism,” as first stated theoretically by Albert Bandura in 1986 (p. 383) seems to me to be pretty much an absolute. It’s also hard for me to imagine a situation in which learning is devoid a social context. Human existence, or animal existence, didn’t originate without a social context. Even bacteria need other bacteria, an environment, and some kind of behavior, to exist and function. When I think about it, nothing else makes sense and it’s an ingenious theory. I also think that all learning has to come from a social context, especially in terms of personality development. It may be that certain aspects of personality are more heavily influenced in social contexts. Temperaments and traits may be influenced by biology, but developed socially.
The social-cognitive theories make a lot of sense to me. I still believe that no matter what influences personality, social contexts, environment, genetics, etc., that the inner workings of personality at any given time are biological in nature. It is what’s inside our brains, no matter the influences, that dictate our personalities. In my life I see the social-cognitive theories explaining a lot. The interests I have, the way I hold myself, my learning goals, performance goals, and who I strive to be as an individual, are molded from people I admire and have learned from. I don’t want to be these people, I strive to be like them. Sometimes if I’m grouchy at work because my employees aren’t being productive, it is both because I want to get things done, and their lackadaisical attitudes. Not one or the other.
Discussion 2 Polina
To understand how goals are achieved through performance or learning, we would need to understand the difference between the two. Performance goal is when when you strive harder to work due to the fact that your performance is being evaluated by others whereas, learning goal is that you work harder based on the critiques that had been given or provided to you. The two goals affect performance and success based on what you view on intelligence is and how it's associated to your performance or learning goal. Those who believe that intelligence levels are fixed believe in entity theory and those who believe that intelligence is a gradual believe in incremental theory (Cervone & Pervin, 2014) In a study done by Dweck, she was able to show that those who had performance goal scored less or lower than those with goal performance due to their level of anxiety or expectation, they tend to suffer high "test anxiety" (Cervone & Pervin, 2014).
I do believe that social cognitive theory applies to learning under the context that it can effect our behaavior through environmental and social factors. Bandura who created the concept of social cognitive theory believed that we change our behavior through constant reinforcement for a goal directed behavior (Cervone & Pervin, 2014).
For example, I want child A to be able to sit down at a table and eat a new item of food other than hot dogs. Through conditioning and constant reinforcement, starting with the process of sitting down with the end goal of eating chicken nuggets. Positive reinforcement is made if behavior changed to accommodate this, negative reinforcement is made if child A reacts in a negative way. To prove Bandura's point, child A will eventual learn through process of learning over the behavior over and over again until eventually over time child A realizes that he would get desired reinforcement quicker through compliance. Child A gets what he wants, and I get want I want which is to sit down and eat said item. Which in turn with constant reinforcement and conditioning, child A will be able to accept social compliance.
This can be applied to the learning and performance goal, through the data acquired from my students, my peers and supervisor will provide me feed back on which area needs improvement and which exceed expectations. I respond very well to this type of environment, using feedbacks to further improve my work. However, if I was to present my data to my peers, I would spend hours psychoanalyzing my work, stress out on my presenation and "performance" thus I would eventually fumble my way through the presentation as if I was a rookie.
