How Student Motivation Evolves Throughout The Middle school And Where Do The Sources Of Changes In Evolutionary Patterns Come From?

Author(s):

Nadia Leroy(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 11 C, Developmental Trajectories of Attitudes and Competencies in the Course of Lower Secondary Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

17:15-18:45

Room:

B009 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Tobias C. Stubbe

Contribution

Representing a transitional stage during which the school destinies are determinated, the middle school years are a critical time for students. Mobilizing adaptation , commitment and decision-making capabilities , this stage of schooling seems to condition their future. The negative consequences of the transition from elementary to middle school has been the subject of particular attention in the educational literature.

More specifically, it is during this period that would begin a decline in academic motivation (eg, Anderman & Maehr , 1994). Indeed, for over three decades, motivation has been considered a crucial factor in explaining school learning. Among the types of motivation proposed by self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002), intrinsic motivation plays a particularly important role in academic achievement. Defined as engagement in an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction experienced by learning, intrinsic motivation is associated with high levels of academic achievement (Elliot & Dweck, 2005 ; ). Thus, numerous studies have reported that, from childhood through adolescence, students showing the highest levels of intrinsic motivation perform best at school, hold the most positive self-perceptions and display the least anxiety at school (Gottfried et al., 2005). Although these relations have been observed for all subject areas, they are particularly significant for math (e.g. Gottfried & Gottfried, 2004; Uguroglu & Walberg, 1979). Concurrently, numerous researchers have pointed out a motivational decline which begins as childhood end and continues throughout adolescence (Gottfried, Fleming & Gottfried, 2001 ; Gottfried, Marcoulides, Gottfried, & Oliver,, 2013 ; Harter, 1981; Lepper & Henderlong, 2000; Spinath & Spinath, 2005 ) with, once again, a particularly striking decline in the math domain.

The study to be presented was conducted on a panel of 1082 students which was followed from the beginning to the end of middle school years. During this period, students completed a questionnaire nine times what allowed us to include this work in a longitudinal approach aiming at accounting for the evolutionary nature of motivational process . Three main objectives have been covered:

Describing the evolution of motivation. Our goal will be to specify the shape of growth in a truly dynamic perspective.

Showing the interest of multilevel growth models in the modeling of change over time ( Bressoux , 2008). We'll see how this statistical modeling technique rarely used in eudcational science provides a more detailed understanding of the dynamic processes that influence learning and thus extend the research questions in education

Analyzing the variance decomposition of motivational processes in order to better determine the levels of analysis to investigate as part of a search for factors (individual, contextual, or both?) explaining the heterogeneity of evolutionary patterns of motivation.

Method

Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) developed by Ryan & Connell (1989). The questionnaire items asked about three main areas: “Why do I do my math homework?,” “Why do I work in math class?” and “Why do I try to do well in math?” The multiple choice answers corresponded to the different motivational regulations: External, Introjected, Identified and intrinsic regulation Additional items were used to identify amotivation. A total of five subscales were used. Students answered on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “Strongly disagree” to 5 “Strongly agree.” We used multilevel growth models which provide great flexibility when it comes to testing a large set of hypotheses on developmental trends. Assuming that the series of four repeated waves of measurements on motivation are represented as Yit (where the indice i represents each student in the study and t represents the different measurement times on the SRQ-A), the longitudinal model equation for describing the development of motivation across the measurement times (also called level 1 model or intra-individual model) contains the initial status (the Intercept) of an individual’s change trajectory and the rate of change (the Slope) of the change trajectory as well as the model residual for each individual at each measurement time. The analyses were all performed using PROC MIXED, based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimation Method, from SAS Software Version 9.3 (Statistical Analysis System, SAS Institute Inc., 2012).

Expected Outcomes

Our results thus reveal that, while the self-determined motivations declined linearly, the nonself-determined motivations developed curvilinearly, showing a slight reduction in their decline over time. However, identified regulation appeared to be the type of motivation most reported by the students. Thus, if they engaged in math, it was mainly because they perceived this subject to be important rather than for the pleasure and satisfaction they might derive from it. Regarding amotivation, a linear increase in scores over the course of the year was noted, indicating that the more students progressed , the more likely they were to state that math is a waste of time and a useless subject. However, this result needs to be qualified since, compared to the other motivational regulations, amotivation was the type of motivation whose scores were the lowest throughout the school years It should nevertheless be pointed out that these observations involved mean developmental patterns and that the variance components for each regulation were significant, indicating that these trajectories were highly heterogeneous: all students did not necessarily follow the same development. The variability of these developmental patterns mainly state at the inter- individual level, for each of the motivational regulations. This result shows that it was mainly the students’ individual characteristics that explained the heterogeneity of mean patterns. However, since the residual intra-individual variance remained significant despite the introduction of the temporal variable into our models, it appears that other processes developing over time may have produced these variations. Lastly, the interclass-level variance, although limited, also indicates that some class-level characteristics might explain why students did not start with the same motivational level and did not change at the same rate.

References

Anderman, E.M., & Maehr, M.L. (1994). Motivation and schooling in the middle grades. Review of Educational Research, 64, 287-309. Deci, L.E., & Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. Plenum Press: New York & London. Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (2002). Handbook of Self-determination Research. Rochester: The University of Rochester Press. Elliot, A. J., & Dweck, C. S. (Eds.) (2005). Handbook of Competence and Motivation. New York: Guilford Press. Gottfried, A. E., Fleming, J. S., & Gottfried, A. W. (2001). Continuity of academic intrinsic motivation from childhood through late adolescence: A longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology. 93, 3-13. Gottfried, A. E., Marcoulides, G. A., Gottfried, A. W., & Oliver, P. (2013). Longitudinal Pathways from Math Intrinsic Motivation and Achievement to Math Course Accomplishments and Educational Attainment. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 6, 68-92. Harter, S. (1981). A Model of intrinsic mastery motivation in children: individual differences and developmental change. Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. Vol. 14. Hillsdale, N.J Lepper, M. R., & Henderlong, J. (2000). Turning “play” into “work” and “work” into “play”: 25 years of research on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. In C. Sansone & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance (pp. 257-307). San Diego: Academic Press. Ryan, R.M., & Connell, J.P. (1989). Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 749-761. Spinath, B. & Spinath, F. M. (2005). Longitudinal analysis of the link between learning motivation and competence beliefs among elementary school children. Learning and Instruction, 15, 87-102.

Author Information

Nadia Leroy (presenting / submitting)

Université Cergy-Pontoise

Gennevilliers

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