How are achievement goals associated with self-, co-, and socially shared regulation in collaborative learning?

It has been suggested that self-organized study groups need to regulate their learning at three levels: the self-, the co-, and the socially shared level. Yet, little is known about how individual learner characteristics influence these regulation processes. In this study, we investigate how students' achievement goals are associated with regulation processes within groups. Two hundred and seventy-seven undergraduates were asked to imagine being part of a self-organized study group with comprehension-related and motivational problems and to name strategies they would apply to regulate their learning in this situation in an open-ended format. Achievement goals were measured using a standardised questionnaire. Results indicated that mastery- and performance-approach goals are positively associated with regulatory effort across all three levels of regulation. Performance-avoidance goals seem to have no significant relationship with regulatory effort.