Goal Complexes: a New Approach to Studying the Coordination, Consequences, and Social Contexts of Pursuing Multiple Goals

Our understanding of multiple goals has been advanced through the lines of research that focus on their pursuit of academic achievement goals and of academic and social goals. These prior efforts, however, are not free from conceptual and methodological limitations. To further advance the field, we put this paper together with two purposes in mind. First, we propose a goal complex model as a new approach to studying the coordination, consequences, and social contexts of pursuing multiple goals. In doing so, we highlight the role of academic goals as the means towards pursuing social goals as the end goals. Second, we proffer a model that explains sociocultural influences on the development of social and academic goals as well as goal complexes. To this end, we highlight the role of parents, teachers, and classmates/peers in promoting students' social and academic goals and in facilitating the formation of goal complexes through these key social agents' influences on the students' goal-related beliefs. Conceptual implications and methodological recommendations for future research on students' multiple goals are discussed. Together, the goal complex approach and the sociocultural model we present in this paper provide the field with directions for future research that seeks to better understand students' pursuit of multiple goals as they navigate complex sociocultural demands in their day-to-day tasks.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a goal complex model and a sociocultural model to further study the coordination, consequences, and social context of pursuing multiple goals. By emphasizing the relationship between academic goals and social goals, as well as the influence of sociocultural factors, it provides directions for future research.