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Running Head : MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 1 A Person-Centered Investigation of Academic Motivation , Performance , and Engagement in a High School Setting
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Wormington, Stephanie Virgine Corpus, Jennifer Henderlong Anderson, Kristen G. |
| Copyright Year | 2011 |
| Abstract | This study used a person-centered approach to identify naturally occurring combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic academic motives and their correlates. 1061 high school students completed measures of academic motivation, performance, and school engagement. Cluster analysis revealed four motivational profiles characterized by high levels of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (high quantity), high intrinsic but low extrinsic motivation (good quality), low intrinsic but high extrinsic motivation (poor quality), and low levels of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (low quantity). Students in the high quantity and good quality profiles reported the strongest academic performance and extracurricular participation, implicating intrinsic motivation as the primary correlate of positive school outcomes in the high school environment. Students in the high quantity profile, however, reported the most emotional engagement with school. These findings suggest that extrinsic motivation may not be maladaptive at the high school level when coupled with high levels of intrinsic motivation. Running Head: MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 3 A Person-Centered Investigation of Academic Motivation, Performance, and Engagement in a High School Setting High school is a low point in student engagement, despite being a critical time for developing the skills necessary to thrive in the adult world (Seidman & French, 1997). Both intrinsic (i.e., learning for enjoyment) and extrinsic (i.e., learning as a means to an end) motivations decrease across the high school transition (Otis, Grouzet, & Pelletier, 2005) and are lower than those of both elementary and college students (Martin, 2009). High school students also report being disconnected from school and teachers (Willms, 2003). This decreased engagement in school is particularly alarming considering adolescents’ newfound freedom; students who are not academically motivated may not pay attention, complete their school work, or even attend school (Yonezawa, Jones, & Joselowsky, 2009). It is vital, then, to investigate high school students’ academic motives and how they map on to meaningful school outcomes. Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) may be a useful framework for conceptualizing academic motivation. In SDT, motives exist along a spectrum ranging from behaviors originating within the self (autonomous, intrinsic) to those spurred by outside forces (controlled, extrinsic). Intrinsic motivation, one end of the motivational continuum, describes behaviors that are inherently interesting or enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation, by contrast, is an overarching term for behaviors governed to varying degrees by external forces; it encompasses identified regulation (behaviors that are not enjoyable but further a personally-held goal or belief), introjected regulation (behaviors spurred by external forces that have been internalized, i.e., guilt), and external regulation (behaviors initiated by external constraints, i.e., rewards or threats). These motives have important consequences in the academic realm. Intrinsic motivation and identified regulation are consistently associated with more positive outcomes than more Running Head: MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 4 controlled motives, including a preference for challenging tasks (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990), enjoyment of material (Harter, 1981; Vallerand, 1997), creativity (Hennessey, 2000), attendance (Vallerand & Bissonnette, 1992), cognitive engagement (Miller, Behrens, & Green, 1993), conceptual learning (Benware & Deci, 1984; Ryan, Connell, & Deci, 1985), and academic performance (Boiché, Sarrazin, Grouzet, Pelletier, & Chanal, 2008; Burton, Lydon, D’Alessandro, & Koestner, 2006; Corpus, McClintic-Gilbert, & Hayenga, 2009; Lepper, Corpus, & Iyengar, 2005). Focusing on the Individual: A Person-Centered Approach What happens, though, when students simultaneously possess both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? How might such students fare relative to those who possess what SDT would consider to be the ideal combination of intrinsic without extrinsic motivation? Because few studies have used a person-centered approach to examine academic motives in concert with one another, it is unclear precisely how intrinsic and extrinsic motives most frequently combine within individual students and to what effect. It is especially important to examine such combinations of academic motives during the high school years when external constraints are particularly salient (Ratelle, Guay, Vallerand, Larose, & Senécal, 2007). A small number of person-centered studies on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have been conducted to date, but they have reached somewhat different conclusions about the prevalence and adaptiveness of different combinations of motivation (Hayenga & Corpus, 2010; Ratelle et al. 2007; Vansteenkiste, Soenens, Sierens, Luyckx, & Lens, 2009). Studies with 6through 8-grade students (Hayenga & Corpus, 2010) and 7–grade through college-aged students (Vansteenkiste et al., 2009) have revealed four profiles: one with high levels of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (high quantity), one with high intrinsic but low extrinsic Running Head: MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 5 motivation (good quality), one with low intrinsic but high extrinsic motivation (poor quality), and one with low levels of both constructs (low quantity). In these studies, students with good quality motivation fared better than their peers from other profiles, thus supporting SDT (Vansteenkiste, Lens, & Deci, 2006). A third study identified the same four motivational groups in a college sample, but the good quality profile was absent from two large samples of high school students (Ratelle et al., 2007). Instead, high school students were characterized by profiles of high quantity, poor quality, and moderate levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Students with poor quality motivation exhibited the lowest academic performance and were most likely to drop out of school. To explain the absence of a good quality profile, Ratelle et al. (2007) argued that the high school environment may be too controlling to effectively foster pure intrinsic motivation (cf. Otis et al., 2005). Vansteenkiste et al. (2009) proposed a more statistically driven explanation, suggesting that it is more difficult for clusters with opposing scores on the relevant dimensions (e.g., high intrinsic, low extrinsic) to emerge when the dimensions of interest are highly correlated with one another. Indeed, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations were moderately positively correlated in Ratelle et al.’s high school samples but not in their college sample or the samples from Vansteenkiste et al. (2009) and Hayenga and Corpus (2010). We suggest two additional explanations for the discrepant findings. First, although both Ratelle et al. (2007) and Vansteenkiste et al. (2009) were situated within the SDT tradition, they used slightly different scales to measure motivation. In particular, the extrinsic items from the Academic Motivation Scale (Vallerand, Pelletier, Blais, Briére, Senécal, & Vallieres, 1993) used by Ratelle et al. represent arguably more internalized motivations than those from the Academic Self-Regulation Scale (Ryan & Connell, 1989) used by Vansteenkiste et al. This may account for Running Head: MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 6 the stronger correlations among constructs in Ratelle et al.’s study and perhaps the different clusters that emerged. Second, Ratelle et al. studied a sample comprised exclusively of high school students; Vansteenkiste et al.’s high school sample included mostly 7and 8-grade students (56%), who were overrepresented in the good quality profile. It is possible, then, that their good quality cluster was driven largely by middle school students and that students characterized by good quality motivation may be rare in high school settings. The present study addressed this ambiguity by focusing on a sample comprised exclusively of high school students. Using SDT as the theoretical groundwork, we preliminarily expected to find four motivational profiles with varying combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation similar to those found in existing person-centered studies. The presence or absence of a good quality profile was of particular interest, given its absence in Ratelle et al.’s high school sample. Academic Performance and School Engagement Existing person-centered studies have focused on academic performance (i.e., GPA) and other learning outcomes (e.g., attitudes about cheating, distraction in class) as correlates of interest. To replicate findings from prior studies, and because grades are critical for students’ success, we measured the relationship between profile membership and performance. A profile characterized by good quality motivation, if found, was expected to possess the highest academic performance based on the tenets of SDT. Otherwise, we generally expected the best performance among students who exhibited the most intrinsic motivation (Burton, et al., 2006; Corpus et al., 2009; Lepper et al., 2005). We also examined school engagement because it is a major factor affecting academic achievement that is more tractable than many other predictive factors (e.g., race, SES) and is particularly low in the United States (Finn, 1993; Lee & Shute, 2010; Martin, 2008; YazzieRunning Head: MOTIVATION IN HIGH SCHOOL 7 Mintz, 2006). Early work on school engagement focused primarily on behavioral aspects such as attendance, participation, and help-seeking behavior (Finn, 1989, 1993; Nelson-LeGall & Jones, 1991; Rumberger, 1987; Willms, 2003). Recently, the definition has expanded to encompass cognitive (e.g., self-regulation) and emotional (e.g., teacher support) aspects of involvement (Appleton, Christenson, Kim, & Reschly, 2006; Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Jimerson, Campos, & Greif, 2003). While many studies consider one aspect of engagement, they rarely conside |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.reed.edu/motivation/docs/WormingtonCorpus_AERA.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
