pp. 72-73

Collectively, the results of our studies suggest that avoidance behavior is more common in schools and classrooms that emphasize performance goals, primarily by making ability differences between students and competition salient features of the learning environment. These results are intuitive. When students find themselves in learning environments that promote social comparison and make ability differences between students salient, it makes sense that they will be concerned with looking able compared to others. For those students who fear or expect that they may not compare favorably with their classmates, the adoption of strategies to avoid such negative social comparisons is to be expected."

p. 71

Gheen and Midgely 1999 examined "how teachers' reports of social comparison practices related to avoiding novelty and chellenge. They found that teachers' reports of informative social comparison practices related to slightly higher levels of avoidance. However, these practices weakened the association between self-efficacy and avoiding novelty and challenge. In classrooms where teachers were high in their use of interstudent discussion about how to improve one's own work, low- and high-efficacy students were on a more equal footing when it came to avoiding novelty challenge. However, in classrooms where teachers reported using high levels of relative ability social comparison practices, low self-efficacy students' avoidance was higher than that of high self-efficacy students'"

pp. 70-71

• Gheen and Midgley 1999 looked at classroom practices of sharing information about student work:
• Where work was shared to "see who got the right answer" (relative ability purposes) and
• to "get hints for when you have difficulty" (acquiring information purposes"

No surprise:

"They found that students' perceptions of the goal structure related to avoidance of novelty and challenge. When students perceived that their classrooms emphasized mastery goals, they reported lower levels of avoidance, but when they perceived their classrooms emphasized performance goals, they were more lilely to say that thei preferred to avoid novel and challenging work."

Shim, Sungok, and Allison Ryan. 2005. “Changes in Self-Efficacy, Challenge Avoidance, and Intrinsic Value in Response to Grades: The Role of Achievement Goals.” The Journal of Experimental Education 73 (4): 333–49.

Studies the extent to which grades impact challenge avoidance. Makes a distinction between performance-avoidance goals and performance-approach goals. Argues that other literature has shown that only performance avoidance behaviour is maladaptive.

Grading has been shown to provoke challenge avoidance behaviour