The Interrelationships among Goal Orientation, Coping and Achievement Motivation after Perceived Academic Failures

Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Jay, and Serena. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the multitude of people who have been furthering me. In particular, I would like to extend my most sincere appreciation to my advisor Dr. Frank Wicker for his devoted guidance throughout my work. Working with Frank has been an invaluable and delightful experience, and his advice and support have helped me advance, both professionally and personally. My thanks also go to Dr. on my committee. I have appreciated their thoughtful feedback, suggestions, and support that made doing a dissertation enjoyable. I also appreciate the help and encouragement I have received from my friends-YoonJong etc. I must be blessed with you for being such good friends and being a part of my life. I would like to express my deep gratitude particularly to Wen-Hung who helped so much on data collection and Sarah who helped me polish the wording and provided valuable feedback on my writing. Without your help, I might not be able to finish this dissertation so smoothly. Lastly, to all of my family and my friends in Austin, Taiwan, and other places: Thank you so much for reaching your hands and giving your support. Most of all, I am deeply grateful for the continuous support I have received from my family. Your loving v support has lightened my life and supported me go through every step I took for my life. Special thanks to my husband, Jay, and my daughter, Serena, for your everlasting love, support, and encourage. You have made a great difference in my life. This dissertation is dedicated to you. on an exam, is a common cause of stress for students in academic settings. It may lead to either beneficial or detrimental effects on students' learning and motivation. Two factors that may influence the difference in reaction to academic failure are the goal orientation that students pursue in the learning context, and the ways that students cope with the academic failure. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed understanding of the relationships among goal orientation and academic failure coping strategies, as well as their effects on students' achievement motivation, using the goal orientation theory framework proposed by Elliot and Church (1997) for the study of college students. Four additional exploratory analyses were also performed which further investigated the important issues regarding the relationships among goal orientation, …