Are You Learning, or Just Looking Smart at Law School?

It might sound surprising to you that in-depth research shows the highest percentage of successful law students being mastery-oriented in contrast to being performance-oriented. The reason as to why a student wants to learn, that is his/her achievement-goal motivation, directly affects the student's overall success. Though in law schools, academic grades are perceived as all-important, and they truly are so; nevertheless, research proves that those who end up with high academic grades are not those who run after achieving grades as a demonstration of performance, but those who run after “mastering” the law.
 

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What is the difference in student goal orientations when going for high academic grades?

Dr. Carol Dweck, a recognized expert in achievement-goal theory, summarizes thus:
 

Individuals may strive for high grades for quite different reasons. They may seek high grades in order to prove that they are intelligent or as an index of learning or mastery of the material. In this approach, these two aims--seeking to prove one's competence versus seeking to improve one's competence--represent two qualitatively different classes of goals (performance goals vs.learning goals, respectively) and, as such, would be expected to have different patterns of behavior-cognition-affect attending their pursuit. (Carol S. Dweck, The Study of Goals in Psychology, 3 PSYCHOL. SCI. 165, 165, 1992)

In a recent study, delving into the performance-based goals structure in law school curricula, besides probing other issues, Leah Christensen probed an issue of relevance to this article: What types of students succeed in a performance-oriented curriculum? And the study found that despite law school curricula being highly performance-based, “the most successful students were mastery-oriented learners. In contrast, there was no statistical correlation between performance-oriented learning and law school success.” That's an eye-opener.

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Who is performance-oriented and who is mastery-oriented?

In a nutshell, performance-oriented law students are those who “seem driven to learn almost exclusively because of grades and exam scores” (Christensen), while mastery-oriented students “appear more interested in developing their overall competence to practice law.” (Christensen) Mastery-oriented law students focus on “developing” abilities, rather than on “demonstrating” abilities.

According to Dweck, mastery-oriented learners focus on learning as something that is valuable and meaningful in itself. They perceive different learning tasks in curricula as ongoing processes and are more concerned with charting their own progress, rather than comparing their progress to that of others.

However, students with performance-oriented goals “want to look smart even if it means not learning [as much] in the process” (Marina Krakovsky, The Effort Effect, STAN. MAG., Mar.-Apr. 2007). For such students, “each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat” (Krakovsky).Thus, students who are motivated by performance goals “pursue only activities at which they're sure to shine – and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish”(Krakovosky) across a broader range of endeavors.

So, now that you know the difference between performance-oriented motivation and mastery-oriented motivation in law students, and what works to achieve overall success and higher grades, we hope you would be able to succeed better at law school.

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References:
 

Leah M. Christensen, "Enhancing Law School Success: A Study of Goal Orientations, Academic Achievement and the Declining Self-Efficacy of Our Law Students," Law and Psychology Review 33, no. 0 (2009)