Abstract
This study examined cross-task consistency and longitudinal stability in elementary school students' task interest, success expectancy, and performance from fourth to sixth grade, and their predictive effects on sixth-grade intrinsic value, self-concept, and achievement in mathematics. The results demonstrated consistency in interest, success expectancy, and performance across tasks and stability over time, and these to predict domain-specific motivation and achievement. Virtually no evidence for reciprocal effects was found for task-specific measures, as only previous task performance predicted change in later success expectancy. Cross-lagged effects were observed, however, for predictions of task motivation and performance on domain-specific motivation and achievement, so that success expectancy predicted intrinsic value, interest predicted self-concept, and task performance predicted both self-concept and achievement. Based on the findings, it would seem that students' task-related motivational experiences are associated with their domain-specific beliefs, and that those, in turn, are to some extent manifested in students' task motivation.
Highlights
Students' incentives for engaging in learning activities and the way they perceive their competence are important motivational precursors of achievement outcomes, including school performance and educational choices
As it is often argued that domain-specific motivation accumulates through repeated experiences in tasks and situations that reflect certain subject areas and related activities (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003; Hidi & Renninger, 2006), it would seem reasonable to investigate whether students' task-specific motivation generalizes across different tasks, and whether they predict similar experiences and domain-specific motivation over time
We examined students' task motivation and performance in terms of their consistency across tasks, stability over time, and relations to domain-specific motivation and achievement through the following research questions: 1) To what extent is there consistency in elementary school students' interest, success expectancy, and performance a) across different types of mathematics tasks, and b) over time? 2a) How are task-related interest, success expectancy, and performance longitudinally related, and 2b) how do they predict intrinsic value, selfconcept, and achievement in mathematics?
Summary
Students' incentives for engaging in learning activities and the way they perceive their competence are important motivational precursors of achievement outcomes, including school performance (e.g., grades; Marsh, Trautwein, Lüdtke, Köller, & Baumert, 2005) and educational choices (e.g., choosing non-compulsory courses; Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006) These effects seem to apply to performance in specific tasks (e.g., task interest and self-efficacy in a problem-solving task; Niemivirta & Tapola, 2007) and to achievement in different subject areas (e.g., value and self-concept in reading; Schoor, 2016), among younger students (Eccles & Wigfield, 1993) as well as older students (Guo, Parker, Marsh, & Morin, 2015). As it is often argued that domain-specific motivation (e.g., intrinsic value and selfconcept in mathematics) accumulates through repeated experiences in tasks and situations that reflect certain subject areas and related activities (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003; Hidi & Renninger, 2006), it would seem reasonable to investigate whether students' task-specific motivation generalizes across different tasks, and whether they predict similar experiences and domain-specific motivation over time
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