From teachers' personal achievement goals to students’ perceptions of classroom goal structures: Via student-oriented goals and specific instructional practices

To elucidate how teachers' goals matter for instructional practices and classroom goal structures, we conducted a study with 84 secondary school teachers and their 1447 students. Students reported classroom goal structures and specific mastery- and performance-oriented instructional practices. Teachers reported personal achievement goals and student-oriented goals. Two-level modeling indicated that mastery-oriented instructional practices were predicted by teachers' student-oriented goals and, indirectly, by their personal mastery goals (positively) and performance approach goals (negatively), while performance-oriented instructional practices were negatively predicted by teachers' personal mastery goals. Classroom goal structures were closely related to these instructional practices and were indirectly predicted by teachers’ goals. •We elucidate how teachers' goals are related to instructional behaviors and classroom goal structures.•Thereto, we use an achievement goal approach and introduce a new concept: teachers' student-oriented goals.•We propose and confirm a mediation model with 84 secondary school teachers and 1,447 students.•Teachers' personal goals affected students' goal structures via student-oriented goals and specific instructional practices.•Results also demonstrate the merits of operationalizing teachers' instructional practices according to the TARGET model.