The relation between high school students' motivational regulation and their use of learning strategies, effort, and classroom performance

Abstract

This study investigates the relation between students' tendency to self-regulate their level of motivation and other aspects of their self-regulated learning and achievement. Ninth- and tenth-grade students ( N = 88) responded to survey items designed to assess five motivational regulation strategies identified in previous research. An exploratory factor analyses of these items revealed distinct, internally consistent scales reflecting the strategies of Self-Consequating, Environmental Control, Performance Self-Talk, Mastery Self-Talk, and Interest Enhancement. Self-report measures of effort, use of six cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, and teacher-reported grades were also collected. Findings revealed mean level differences in students' reported use of the motivational strategies. In addition, results from a series of multivariate regressions indicated that students' use of motivational regulation strategies could be used to predict their use of learning strategies, effort, and classroom performance. As a whole, findings support the belief that motivational self-regulation should be integrated more completely into current models of volition and self-regulated learning.