It is clear that the array of goals facing students is a daunting one. Students are typically concerned not only with academic work, but also with the liking and esteem of their teachers and peers – and with their parents' reactions to their academic and social life. Even in the best of all possible worlds, juggling this variety of concerns would be difficult. When one considers that this is often not the best of all possible worlds – for example, that what peers value is often not what parents and teachers value – then coordinating the various social and academic goals becomes even more demanding. Each of these chapters deals in an extremely thoughtful way with the psychological factors that predict how and how well students will confront these challenges.

Drawing on the wealth of research provided in the six chapters, I will use a “goal analysis” to tie together the many findings and to integrate the different perspectives represented in the chapters. I will begin by discussing the kinds of goals students may pursue in academic settings. I will then move to an examination of the factors shown by research to affect successful goal pursuit and school adjustment, and I will end by proposing a dynamic model of goals that organizes these factors into a system of coherent processes. As the work reviewed in these chapters attests, such a goal analysis can be a fruitful way to understand academic and social functioning (see Erdley; Ford; Harter; Juvonen; Kupersmidt, Buchele, Voegler, and Sedikides; and Schunk and Zimmerman chapters; see also Dodge, Asher, & Parkhurst, 1989; Pervin, 1982; 1989; Wentzel, 1991a; this volume.).