How Parent Involvement, Parents’ Autonomy Support, Teacher Support Affect Students’ Homework Effort: The Self-determination Perspective

Based on self-determination theory (SDT), this study aimed to investigate the relationship among parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support, teacher support, homework motivation and homework effort. Six hundred and sixty-six middle school students in seventh and eighth grade were administered with questionnaires concerning perceived parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support, teacher support, self-determined homework motivation and homework effort in the domain of mathematics. The main results were as following:(1) In the domain of mathematics, there were significant gender differences in students’ homework autonomous motivation, and boys has higher homework autonomous motivation;(2) Parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support and teacher support positively correlated with students’ homework autonomous motivation and homework effort, students’ homework autonomous motivation positively correlated with homework effort, students’ homework controlled motivation negatively correlated with homework effort;(3) Parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support and teacher support predicated mathematics homework effort positively, and students’ homework autonomous motivation partially mediated the relationship between parent involvement and homework effort and fully mediated the relationship between parents’autonomy support, teacher support, and homework effort.The results showed that parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support, teacher support, and homework autonomous motivation are important factors affected homework effort. And parent involvement, parents’ autonomy support and teacher support affected homework effort by affecting homework autonomous motivation.