Patterns of motivation and communication in learning environments: a latent profile analysis

Abstract

This study identified the patterns of motivation (i.e., the motivation profiles) that reflect the interrelationships among expectancies of success, utility value beliefs, and perceptions of cost pertaining to an important school domain, namely mathematics. In addition, this research investigated similarities/differences among these profiles with regard to a set of eight motivation and communication factors that play key roles in learning environments: the motive to avoid failure, competitiveness, entity theory of intelligence, prevention orientation, general and school-related communicative self-efficacy, satisfaction in communicating with the mathematics teacher, and communication apprehension. To examine these aspects, data were collected from 463 secondary school students. Latent profile analyses were conducted to identify the motivation profiles. The results indicate that four motivation profiles provided a parsimonious representation of students’ patterns of expectancies of success, utility value, and cost related to mathematics. In addition, significant differences among profiles were found for the majority of the factors.