Students' achievement motivation has been the concern of educational psychologists for the past several decades. Empirical studies on the effects of teachers' feedback provide useful information to educators on instructional practices. From these studies, educators know how to cultivate adaptive learning attitudes in students. However, a meta-analysis by Kluger & DeNisi (1996, 1998) did not find consistent effects of success and failure feedbacks in past studies. Idson and Higgins (2000) suggested that regulatory focus, a personality variable, could address these inconsistent effects. In their study, Idson & Higgins (2000) found that individuals with different orientation in regulatory focus would respond differently to success and failure feedback. The motivation of individuals with promotion focus would increase after success feedback but decrease after failure feedback. In contrast, the motivation of individuals with prevention focus would increase after failure but decrease after success feedback.
The present study attempted to identify the group of individuals who would be motivated both after success and failure feedbacks. It adopted an alternative fourfold classification of regulatory focus and extended Idson & Higgins (2000) study. Four independent groups could be derived from this classification: 1) individuals high in promotion focus but low in prevention focus; 2) individuals high in prevention focus but low in promotion focus, 3) individuals high in both prevention and promotion focuses (HH); 4) individuals low in both prevention and promotion focuses (LL). The third group of individuals was expected to be motivated after success and also failure feedbacks. They might be the people with the most adaptive motivational pattern of behaviors.
The present study adopted a 2 (promotion focus: high vs. low) x 2 (prevention focus: high vs. low) x 2 (feedback: success vs. failure) experimental design. The participants were 180 Hong Kong university students

A survey study was conducted with 251 preservice teacher education students in Hong Kong by administering a questionnaire comprising three inventories to measure their conceptions of learning, culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Preliminary correlational analyses of the above three variables showed significant relationships between some subscales, consistent with previous research findings in literature which suggested that conceptions of learning are related to a number of variables such as students' learning approaches and the quality of learning. Further analysis was conducted by testing a structural model on selected categories of conceptions of learning (learning as an increase in knowledge and learning as personal fulfilment), culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Satisfactory goodness of fit index was obtained with the proposed model. Path analysis showed that the conception "learning as an increase in knowledge" was positively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation, deep strategy and surface strategy; individual oriented achievement motivation was positively and significantly related to deep strategy but negatively and significantly related to surface strategy. The conception "learning as personal fulfilment" was positively and significantly related to individual oriented achievement motivation but negatively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation. Implications for learning and teaching were drawn based on the model result.
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