Self-determination theory (SDT) is a widely recognized theory of human development and well-being, with strong implications for education (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2017, 2020). The SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2020), posits that people are naturally prone to psychological growth and integration, and thus to learning, mastery, and connection with others, but also that these proactive human tendencies require supportive conditions to be robust. The supporting conditions theoretically refer to the three basic psychological needs; when people experience the satisfaction of relatedness, competence, and autonomy, they tend to internalise their value and regulation and experience activities as interesting and spontaneously satisfying, leading to increased engagement, learning, and well-being (Ryan and Deci, 2020). 

In Finland, approximately one third of girls and one in five boys in grades eight and nine of basic education, general upper secondary schools, and vocational institutions consider their health to be average or poor according to the School Health Promotion Study 2023 (THL, 2024). The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential of basic psychological needs support in addressing the current educational challenges pertaining to student motivation and wellbeing, burnout and dropout, in VET environments. To date, research on the relationship between basic psychological needs and negative consequences has been less extensive than that on positive processes (Nunes et al., 2023; Van der Broeck et al., 2021). 

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence and relatedness), two measures of school burnout, that is school exhaustion and school cynicism (Salmela-Aro et al., 2009), as well as students' intentions to drop out of school (Vallerand et al., 1997). We formulated two research questions for our study: RQ1) Is the factorial structure consistent and reliable in describing the relationships between BPNS, burnout exhaustion, burnout cynicism and school dropout intentions?; RQ2) How do students' autonomy, competence and relatedness satisfaction relate to burnout exhaustion, burnout cynicism and dropout intentions?

Cross-sectional online survey data were collected in 2023 from vocational students at a large vocational institution in Finland. After missing data and multivariate normality analyses, the final data for analyses consisted of 255 participants, of whom 153 were female (60.0%). Participants' average age was 24.7 years (SD = 10.740, min = 16.0, max = 59.0) and most participants were second (n = 82, 32.2%) and third (n = 31, 12.2%) year students. Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction (BPNS) was measured using three scales from the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration – Work Domain questionnaire (Chen et al., 2015; Schultz et al., 2015): Autonomy Satisfaction, Competence Satisfaction, and Relatedness Satisfaction. School burnout was measured using three scales from the School Burnout Inventory (SBI) (Salmela-Aro et al., 2009): Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Inadequacy. Dropout intentions were assessed with two items measuring vocational students’ future schooling intentions ('I often consider dropping out of school' and 'I intend to drop out of school') (Vallerand et al. (1997). Data were analysed in R using correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling.

Correlation analyses showed that the items within each factor correlated positively strongly, confirming H1 (BPNS: Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness) and H2 (Burnout Exhaustion, Burnout Cynicism, Dropout). The results of the second research question showed that all BPNS factors were negatively related to school burnout exhaustion, but only relation of autonomy was statistically significant. Autonomy and competence had negative relations with school burnout cynicism but only the relation of autonomy was statistically significant. Interestingly, relatedness was positively (but non-significantly) related to school burnout cynicism. All three BPNS factors were negatively related to school dropout intentions, but only the relation of autonomy was statistically significant. Overall, the findings suggested that supporting the basic psychological needs of VET students may reduce school burnout and the intention to drop out of school. Nevertheless, further research is required to investigate the potential influence of perceived social relatedness on the development of burnout cynicism, and vice versa. Furthermore, the results indicated that female students, as well as those with older age or less work experience, experienced more burnout exhaustion than other respondents. A more comprehensive analysis is thus needed to gain better understanding of the factors that increase exhaustion within these groups of students.

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