Abstract
BackgroundResearch illustrates that student motivations influence learning engagement, persistence, and achievement in powerful ways and that positive motivations are linked to deeper learning, critical thinking, pro-social behavior, and better performance. Most studies of learner motivation, however, are conducted outside of STEM and are focused at the contextual level, which may describe why students attend college or choose a degree program, but not why they engage in classroom activities. Furthermore, there is little research that meaningfully connects learner motivations with gender identity and course pedagogy. This study addresses these gaps by examining the interconnections among course pedagogy, gender, and situational-level motivations, which reveal why learners engage in different course activities and how engagement may vary over time. This detailed perspective on learner motivations is essential for instructors to gain insights into how their pedagogical and course design choices influence students’ motivational responses and to more effectively develop interventions that support positive forms of motivation among all students.ResultsParticipants in the study are undergraduate students enrolled in 72 introductory-level STEM courses across 11 institutions, and the dataset includes over 5000 unique responses to the Situational Motivation Scale, a Self-Determination Theory-based instrument that was administered weekly in each course. Analysis reveals seven typical motivational response types, ranging from a highly control-oriented to a highly autonomous response. Most students express multiple types of motivation during an academic term in a course, illustrating the dynamic nature of motivations. Cluster distributions by gender and pedagogy indicate significant differences in lecture-based learning courses, with women reporting less self-determined motivations compared to men. Motivational response profiles of women and men are both more similar, and more positive overall, in courses that employ active learning.ConclusionsThese findings have important implications for practitioners. The concept of motivational co-expression encourages instructors to move toward a more nuanced appraisal of learner motivation. The stability analyses challenge embedded beliefs about the fixed nature of learner motivation. The gender analyses raise questions about how instructors may more effectively promote the positive motivations of all students through their course design decisions.
Highlights
Instructors tend to oversimplify learner motivations in the classroom, by labeling students or even entire groups of students as “motivated” or “unmotivated,” or by making generalized assumptions about what drives students to learn, e.g., my students only care about grades
Part of a larger mixed-methods investigation aimed at understanding student motivations in the classroom, this paper presents quantitative clustering analyses of situational motivations in undergraduate STEM courses, with a focus on gendered patterns of motivation in different pedagogical environments, as well as the stability or instability of individual students’ motivations
Correlational analysis of the four subscale measures revealed an ordered simplex-like pattern as described by Guay et al (2000), in which the types of motivation show stronger or weaker, and positive or negative, correlations based on their position along the self-determination continuum
Summary
Instructors tend to oversimplify learner motivations in the classroom, by labeling students or even entire groups of students as “motivated” or “unmotivated,” or by making generalized assumptions about what drives students to learn, e.g., my students only care about grades. Less positive motivations, such as reward-based drive, relate to surface-level learning, poorer performance and persistence, and negative emotions (Black and Deci 2000; Deci and Ryan 2000) These relationships are not correlational: path models illustrate causal links between different types of motivations and specific learning outcomes (Fortier et al 1995; Kaplan and Madjar 2017; Lavasani et al 2011; Walker et al 2006). This study addresses these gaps by examining the interconnections among course pedagogy, gender, and situational-level motivations, which reveal why learners engage in different course activities and how engagement may vary over time This detailed perspective on learner motivations is essential for instructors to gain insights into how their pedagogical and course design choices influence students’ motivational responses and to more effectively develop interventions that support positive forms of motivation among all students
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