There has been an alarming trend for students to experience a decrease in motivation and positive emotions as well as an increase of negative emotions during their school career. This is most likely to occur in conjunction with the transition from primary to secondary school, and more so for low-achieving students and for the subject area of math. The aim of the present contribution is to discuss whether an intervention program can counteract this negative development: (I) How could 7th-grade students’ (lowest achievement level) self-determined motivation and learning enjoyment be aintained or fostered? (II) How could their anxiety and boredom be reduced? From September to November 2015 and from March to May 2016, we implemented a combined student/teacher intervention and a student-only intervention in the classroom setting, compared to a control group. The interventions for the students in both intervention groups consisted of four three-lesson workshops, the intervention for the teachers in the combined group was an in-service training of two half-day meetings with follow-up activities. The contents of the interventions were primarily based on basic need satisfaction (Deci/Ryan 2002), as well as the concept of emotions (Pekrun/Linnenbrink-Garcia 2012) and self-regulation. The development of students’ self-determined motivation and emotions were assessed in a pre-post-measurement design: T1 at the beginning and T2 at the end of 7th-grade. The results show a positive development for students in the combined group over the course of 7th grade with a significant increase in intrinsic math motivation and learning enjoyment and a significant decrease in math anxiety and anger. Students in the student-only group show a decrease regarding their self-determined motivation and learning enjoyment. However, these students (as well as students in the control group) also experience a decline in math anxiety. The results suggest that it is possible to promote 7th-grade students’ self-determined motivation and learning enjoyment in math through a multicomponent combined student/teacher intervention. These results highlight the importance of teacher involvement and participation. The results merit further discussion regarding students’ profile and transition effects, student and teacher involvement, and the pre-intervention motivational level.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic dialectical perspective. Handbook of self-determination research, 3-33. Pekrun, R., & Linnenbrink-Garcia, L. (2012). Academic emotions and student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 259–282). New York: Springer.