Researchers often dispute about the types of achievement goal orientations need to be supported in learning environments. Most studies report the importance of supporting mastery goal orientations in classrooms. Mastery oriented students focus more on challenge, effort, and understanding while  performance oriented students focus mainly on getting better grades than others, receiving recognition for their performances and getting positive judgments about their abilities (Ryan, Pintrich, & Midgley, 2001).

The relationships among classroom goal structure, self-efficacy beliefs, and academic help-seeking/avoidance behaviors were studied with the participation of sixth-grade students in U.S.A. (Ryan, Gheen, & Midgley, 1998). Researchers in this particular study hypothesized that in mastery goal oriented classrooms, students would be more likely to seek for help when needed regardless of their self-efficacy beliefs whereas in performance oriented classrooms, students’ approach to help seeking would show variations depending on their self-efficacy beliefs. In other words, it was expected that self-efficacy beliefs would moderate the relationship between performance goal orientation and academic help seeking/avoidance behaviors. Results showed that self-efficacy beliefs and avoidance of help-seeking was negatively correlated. As predicted, students who reported mastery oriented classroom structure were less likely to avoid seeking help whereas students who reported performance oriented classroom structure were more likely to avoid seeking assistance when needed. No significant interaction was detected between the classroom goal structure and students’ self-efficacy beliefs. Less-efficacious students even in the task-focused classrooms still reported less help seeking behavior compared to their high-efficacious classmates.

Students’ goal orientations and their relations to other motivational factors were not examined enough in Turkish college settings. In order to assess how mastery and performance goal orientations relate to self-efficacy and academic help-seeking behaviors of junior college students in Turkey a study was designed. The major question of the study was the following: What are the relationships among junior college students’ mastery and performance goal orientations, their academic self-efficacy beliefs, and academic help-seeking behaviors? Based on related research, it was hypothesized that mastery goal orientations would be significantly positively related to students’ academic self-efficacy and academic help-seeking behaviors; performance goal orientations, on the other hand, would be significantly negatively related to students’ academic self-efficacy and academic help-seeking behaviors; academic self-efficacy would be significantly positively related to students’ academic help-seeking behaviors.

Elliot, A. J. & Murayama, K. (2008). On the measurement of achievement goals: Critique, illustration, and application. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(3), 613-628. Pintrich, P. R., Smith, D. A., Garcia, T., & McKeachie, W. J. (1991). A manual for the use of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (MSLQ). Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan. Roeser, R. W., Eccles, J. S., & Sameroff, A. J. (1998). Academic and emotional functioning in early adolescence: Longitudinal relations, patterns, and prediction by experience in middle school. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 321–352. Ryan, A. M., Gheen, M. H., & Midgley, C. (1998). Why do some students avoid asking for help? An examination of the interplay among students’ academic efficacy, teachers’ social-emotional role, and the classroom goal structure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 528-535. Ryan, A. M., Pintrich, P. R., & Midgley, C. (2001). Avoiding seeking help in the classroom: Who and why? Educational Psychology Review, 13(2), 93-114.