How does setting mastery goals impact a student’s motivation and views of…

Concept: Achievement-goal theory splits goal orientation into mastery goals, which focus on learning and improving, and performance goals, which focus on proving or protecting one's image of competence. Mastery goals are consistently linked to intrinsic motivation — engaging with a task for the value of learning itself — and to Carol Dweck's incremental (growth) view of ability, the belief that ability develops through effort and practice, as opposed to the entity (fixed) view that treats ability as an unchangeable trait.

Application: A student who sets mastery goals is focused on understanding and skill growth rather than on grades, rewards, or outperforming peers — this is intrinsic motivation. The same orientation carries the incremental belief: because the student expects effort to translate into improvement, ability is treated as something that expands with practice rather than a fixed ceiling.

Cross-check: Each of the remaining combinations instead describes a performance-goal profile rather than a mastery one:

• Persisting with a task for the learning itself while still believing ability is a fixed, unchangeable trait describes an inconsistent profile — a fixed-ability belief is what typically drives students toward avoiding challenge rather than sustaining engagement with it.

• Effort driven mainly by external rewards or recognition, paired with viewing ability as a fixed trait one must prove to others, describes the classic ego-protective, performance-oriented profile rather than one centred on learning.

• Effort driven mainly by external rewards or comparison with others, even where ability is seen as something that can grow, still centres on outcome and image rather than on the learning process itself.

This is also the CTET Paper 2 (July 2024) officially keyed answer for this item.