This study aims to examine and compare the effects of middle school students’ learning
motivation on the academic records, which assess students’ cognitive ability measured by school
level tests, and the cross-curricular competence which includes both the assessment of students’
affective domain and cognitive one as the lifelong learning competency. We analyzed 4,541
students from 69 middle schools in the three districts of Gyeonggi province in Korea during 2013
using structural equation model. The results are following: First, fundamental to the significant
improvement of the academic records and the cross-curricular competence are the attention
ability, the control motivation, and the control expectancy. Especially, the control expectancy,
which is self-efficacy expectancy to the learning, had strong effect on the cross-curricular
competence. Second, the performance-approach goal orientation, which is extrinsic motivation
characterized by low self-determination, comparing to the others and external rewards,
significantly improves the academic records, but has statistically significant negative effects on
the cross-curricular competence. Third, the means and beliefs(luck), which attribute academical
success and failure to luck, decrease both of the academic records and the cross-curricular
competence significantly, while proclivity to give in decreases the former only. These results
indicate that self-efficacy based self-related belief is an important factor in learning, and records
and rewards centered learning motivation debilitates lifelong learning competence. In the world of
continuous technological innovation, current education practices which is based on the
performance- approach goal orientation should move to more learning-approach goal for the
students’ sustainable learning competency.