Cyberbullying has aroused scientific interest given the impact it has on the lives of young people. The present study proposes to analyze the relationship between self-concept (Self-Description Questionnaire I), academic goals (Achievement Goals Tendencies Questionnaire), and the participation of the roles of victim, bully and bystander in cyberbullying (Cyberbullying. Screening for peer bullying and cyberbullying), by gender and grade. The sample was composed of 548 students (49.8% girls) in 5th and 6th grade of Primary Education (Mage = 10.95, SD = 0.7). Logistic regression analyses showed the explicative role of social self-concept and learning goals in the three roles, highlighting the academic self-concept and achievement goals in the victims, as well as the high social reinforcement goals in bullies and bystanders. This relation varied slightly according to gender and grade, being the motivational orientation towards school achievement a protector of victimization in girls and 6th grade students. The findings are discussed, pointing out their involvement in the development of preventive cyberbullying programs in preadolescence.

In highly competitive settings like university, the fear of failure leads some students to protect their self-worth using self-handicapping strategies. The present investigation examines to what extent academic goals are related to those tactics in university students. Specifically, MANCOVA was applied to estimate statistical differences linked to behavioral and claimed self-handicapping strategies according to the level (high/medium/low) of four types of academic goal (achievement approach, achievement avoidance, mastery approach, and work avoidance). Degree, year in school, and gender were entered as covariates. 940 students (86.5% women) from University of A Coruña (M = 20.44; SD = 1.73) participated. Results show that: (a) both behavioral and claimed self-handicapping are promoted by ego-oriented goals (achievement avoidance, F(2, 937) = 23.56, p < .001, ηp2 = .048; achievement approach, F(2, 937) = 7.49, p < .001, ηp2 = .016); (b) work avoidance goals are related to behavioral self-handicapping (F(2, 937) = 9.09, p < .001, ηp2 = .019), but are not statistically linked to claimed self-handicapping; and (c) mastery approach goals are significantly, negatively related to both types of self-handicapping (F(2, 937) = 20.09, p < .001, ηp2 = .041). Psychological and educational implications of the findings are discussed.

This work arises from the need to investigate the role of motivational variables in homework involvement and academic achievement of elementary school students. The aims of this study are twofold: identifying the different combinations of student academic goals and analyzing the differences in homework involvement and academic achievement. The sample was composed of 535 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade elementary school students, between the ages of 9 and 13 years old. Findings showed three groups with different motivational profiles: a group of students with high multiple goals, another group with a learning goal orientation and a third group defined by a low multiple goals profile. Focusing on the differences between groups, it was observed that the amount of time doing homework was not associated with any motivational profile. Nevertheless, the differences were statistically significant between the motivational groups in the amount of homework (F(2, 530) = 42.59; p < .001; ηp 2 = .138), in the management of time spent on homework (F(2, 530) = 33.08; p < .001; ηp 2 = .111), and in academic achievement (F(2, 530) = 33.99; p < .001; ηp 2 = .114). The effect size was large for the amount of homework performed and was also relatively large in the case of management of time and academic achievement.

In this paper, the relations between academic goals and various indicators that define the quality of the learning process are analyzed. The purpose was to determine to what extent high, moderate, or low levels of academic goals were positively or negatively related to effort regulation, the value assigned to academic tasks, meta-cognitive self-regulation, self-efficacy, beliefs about learning control, and management of time and study environment. The investigation was carried out with a sample of 632 university students (70% female and 30% male) and mean age of 21.22 (SD=2.2).The results show that learning goals, or task orientation, are positively related to all the indictors of learning quality considered herein. Although for other kinds of goals—work-avoidance goals, performance-approach goals, and performance-avoidance goals—significant relations were not found with all the indicators, there was a similar tendency of significant results in all cases; the higher the levels of these goals, the lower the levels of the indicators of learning quality.

Based on academic goal theory, we compared the goals of visually impaired and sighted students. Participants included 171 students affiliated with ONCE (the National Spanish Organization for the Blind) and 163 sighted students, ranging from 8 to 27 years of age, who responded to the Spanish adaptation (González, Torregrosa, & Navas, 2002) of the goals questionnaire created by Hayamizu, Ito, and Yohiazaki (1989) and Hayamizu and Weiner (1991). Factor analysis indicated that goals varied among these students and that new ones arose in this study; furthermore, the model remained invariable regardless of students' status (visually impaired versus sighted). Cluster analysis revealed three distinct profiles in terms of academic goals, while discriminant function analysis suggested these profiles vary as a function of students' status (visually impaired versus sighted). It seems that visually impaired students hold more learning-oriented academic goals.