A Study On Middle School Students' Self-determined Motivation

In this study we transcribed three scales about self-determined motivation research into Chinese ones. And by these transcribed scales we examined whether contextual and personal motivational variables, taken from self-determination theory, could predict students' cognitive experience and grades in mathematics education, as well as participation in optional mathematics education in the following school year. Structural equation modeling analysis with a sample of 243 middle school students showed that need support provided by the teachers was related to student need satisfaction, which in turn predicted self-determined motivation. The latter predicted directly concentration in math classes and future participation in optional math education. In addition, we also used experiments with a sample of 57 middle school students to examine whether the three methods including acknowledging participants' feelings, offering a meaningful rationale for the requested task and offering free choice not controlling, could give students autonomy support and furthermore to promote students' self-determined motivation. The results showed that the most effective method was acknowledging students' feelings, while offering a meaningful rationale for the requested task and offering free choices were only helpful to the students with clear objects and better self-regular competence.