Students' school performance, task-focus, and situation-specific motivation

Journal article

Going beyond studies of individual differences in and profiles of students' motivation, we investigated situation-specific (intra-personal) experiences of autonomous (enjoyment, interest, and task choice) and controlled (having to do, and the teacher wanting them to do a task) motivation across learning situations during one week, and how these were related to student characteristics (teacher rated academic performance and task-focus). Three-hundred and fourteen primary school students (Years 5 and 6) completed electronic questionnaires on Personal Digital Assistants, on an average of 11.2 learning episodes during a week. Multilevel Structural Equation Models provided support for a model based in organismic integration theory (OIT). At the situation-level, controlled motivation positively predicted autonomous motivation. At the student-level, students differed in the association between autonomous and controlled motivations, such that lower performers felt more autonomously motivated when controlled motivation was high. Implications for teacher practice are discussed.

Authors: Malmberg, L; Pakarinen, E; Vasalampi, K; Nurmi, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Learning and Instruction
• Volume: 39
• Pages: 158-167
• Publication date: 2015-06-30
• Acceptance date: 2015-05-25
• DOI: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2015.05.005
• ISSN: 0959-4752
• Keywords: SBTMR; multilevel structural equation model; academic performance; motivation; task-focus; autonomous and controlled motivation