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Are Autonomous and Controlled Motivations School-Subjects-Specific?

  • Chanal J Department of Psychology, Methodology and Data Analysis Group, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Distance Learning University, Brig, Switzerland.
  • Guay F Faculty of Educational Sciences, Laval University, Quebec, Canada.
  • 2015-08-07
Published in:
  • PloS one. - 2015
Achievement
Child
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Humans
Male
Motivation
Self Concept
Students
Surveys and Questionnaires
English This research sought to test whether autonomous and controlled motivations are specific to school subjects or more general to the school context. In two cross-sectional studies, 252 elementary school children (43.7% male; mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 1.3 years) and 334 junior high school children (49.7% male, mean age = 14.07 years, SD = 1.01 years) were administered a questionnaire assessing their motivation for various school subjects. Results based on structural equation modeling using the correlated trait-correlated method minus one model (CTCM-1) showed that autonomous and controlled motivations assessed at the school subject level are not equally school-subject-specific. We found larger specificity effects for autonomous (intrinsic and identified) than for controlled (introjected and external) motivation. In both studies, results of factor loadings and the correlations with self-concept and achievement demonstrated that more evidence of specificity was obtained for autonomous regulations than for controlled ones. These findings suggest a new understanding of the hierarchical and multidimensional academic structure of autonomous and controlled motivations and of the mechanisms involved in the development of types of regulations for school subjects.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/118323
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