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This study set out to identify the kinds of achievement orientations that adolescents show, and to examine the kinds of antecedents and consequences the use of a particular orientation has. The participants were 734 Swedish adolescents (335 boys and 399 girls) who filled in questionnaires measuring their achievement beliefs and behaviors, depressive symptoms, engagement with school, and norm‐breaking behavior. By using clustering‐by‐cases analysis, five achievement orientation groups were identified: optimism, defensive‐pessimism, self‐handicapping, and learned helplessness, and a group showing average levels of criteria variables. The results showed further that a decrease in depressive symptoms and an increase in engagement with school predicted a move to the use of optimistic and defensive‐pessimistic groups, whereas a reverse pattern predicted a move to the helplessness and self‐handicapping groups. Moreover, the optimistic and defensive‐pessimistic achievement orientations at Time 1 predicted an increase in engagement with school and a decrease in depressive symptoms later on, whereas self‐handicapping and learned helplessness predicted a decrease in engagement with school and increases in depressive symptoms and norm‐breaking behavior.

This study investigated whether self-concordance of adolescents' achievement-related goal predicts their school engagement and lack of burnout during upper secondary school as well as their subsequent educational trajectories. We also examined whether goal effort and progress mediate these associations. The sample consisted of 614 17-year-old upper secondary school students, who were surveyed three times: (1) in the second grade of upper secondary, (2) in the third grade of upper secondary school, and (3) one year later. The results showed that when adolescents pursued their achievement-related goal for internal reasons, they also invested effort in their goal, which was reflected in a high level of goal progress. Among girls, goal progress predicted a high level of school engagement during upper secondary school and, subsequently, success in the educational transition after upper secondary school, whereas low goal progress was related to school burnout, which in turn was reflected later on in delay in studies and low educational aspirations.