Understanding Motivational Profiles of High-Ability Female Students from a Singapore Secondary School: A Self-Determinat
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Understanding Motivational Profiles of High-Ability Female Students from a Singapore Secondary School: A SelfDetermination Approach Leng Chee KONG1 • Woon Chia LIU1
De La Salle University 2020
Abstract Using the self-determination theory (SDT), this study sought to understand motivational profiles and their links to psychological learning attributes. Participants were 90 secondary three (grade 9) students, aged 15 to 16 years old, from an elite all-girls school in Singapore. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three clusters of students with distinct motivational profiles. MANOVA, ANOVA and post hoc tests showed that the three clusters differed significantly in self-efficacy, intrinsic task value, effort and enjoyment in learning. A ‘‘highly motivated’’ cluster characterised by high introjected, identified and intrinsic regulations was found to be most adaptive, with the ‘‘highly motivated’’ cluster being associated with the most optimal psychological learning attributes. An ‘‘unmotivated’’ cluster characterised by high amotivation was found among this sample of high-ability students, with the ‘‘unmotivated’’ cluster being the least adaptive. The importance of understanding how the different motivational regulations were combined to influence psychological learning attributes was discussed. Keywords Self-determination theory Motivation Motivational profile Cluster analysis
& Leng Chee KONG [email protected] Woon Chia LIU [email protected] 1
Psychology and Child & Human Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore
Introduction Motivation involves the processes that energise, direct and sustain behaviours towards a goal (Ryan and Deci 2000). It is the driving force that propels individuals towards action. Motivation is highly valued because of its consequences and it especially concerns educators because they have to motivate students to act. Indeed, studies have shown that individuals who were motivated demonstrated more adaptive learning outcomes such as higher self-efficacy (Senko and Tropiano 2016), deeper learning and greater persistence in learning (Sommet and Elliot 2017). Motivation is particularly relevant to the educators in the city-state of Singapore. In this city-state, people are the only natural resource and the competitiveness of the citystate depends very much on the initiatives of the people and their abilities to continuously learn. Hence, for educators, understanding the motivational profiles of their students and their links to psychological learning attributes would be very useful pedagogical knowledge. This study investigated the motivational profiles of highability female students in Singapore. When examining motivational profiles, educators tend to focus on the motivational profiles of low-ability students as there is a general perception that low-ability students have motivational issues. Also, gender studies have often reported that female students relative to their
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