Proposal view
| Proposal Type: | Symposium |
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| Domain: | Motivational and Affective Processes |
| SIG: | Motivation and Emotion |
| Type | Submitted Symposium |
| Title | Self-Determination in Educational Contexts: Are the Beneficial Effects Universal? |
| Abstract | Linking features of the learning context to students’ motivation is an emerging trend in education research (Volet & Jarvela, 2001). However, in order to systematize research, a sound theoretical foundation is needed. The present symposium draws on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2002) and its assumption of three basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and social relatedness – as fundamental motives that foster individuals’ subjective well-being and motivation. Contextual features play an important role from this perspective, forming opportunities or constraints for the satisfaction of these psychological needs, which in turn supports individual development. Conceptually, all students are assumed to show higher subjective well-being and adaptive learning behaviour in learning contexts where their basic needs are supported. However, a further layer of complexity is introduced when other individual motivational characteristics are taken into account. Motivational characteristics such as stable individual intrinsic interest, personal goals, goal orientations, and values (Pintrich, 2003) have all been found to be associated with more adaptive learning and better achievement outcomes. Do students with different motivational characteristics benefit equally from the same environmental features? This symposium discusses how features of the learning environment, features of the person, and the interplay between the two affect students’ functioning. It brings together studies of contextual variables such as perceptions of teachers’ supportiveness in the classroom, the framing of learning activities, and perceptions of fellow students’ characteristics. Drawing on different methodological approaches such as experimental, correlational, and multilevel designs, the studies examine the effect of these contextual features on students’ need satisfaction and individual goals, as well as on their learning behaviour and other outcome variables. |
| Equipment |
PC and projector |
| Keywords | Learning environments Motivation |
| Chair list | |||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | |
| Mareike | Kunter | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | kunter@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | |
| Organiser list | |||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | |
| Mareike | Kunter | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | kunter@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | |
| Yi-Miau | Tsai | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | tsai@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | |
| Discussant list | |||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | |
| Kevin | Miller | University of Michigan | United States | kevinmil@umich.edu | |
| Paper Details |
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| Title | Students' Need Support and Motivation for Homework |
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| Abstract | This presentation will describe findings from a research project that employs SDT to investigate the role of teachers in students' motivation for homework. More specifically, we tested the hypothesis that teachers' support of students' psychological needs would be associated with increased adaptive motivation for homework. Thirty-four 4th grade and 49 8th grade students responded to surveys asking about their motivation for homework, their level of psychological needs, and their perceptions of teacher’s behavior as supporting their needs in the context of homework. Findings supported the mediating role of perceived teacher's support of students' needs in the relation between grade-level and student intrinsic motivation for homework. Moreover, the role of perceived teacher support of psychological needs in student motivation for homework was found to depend on students' level of expressed needs. The presentation will elaborate on findings from a larger project which involves data from parents and from participants in two cultural groups. |
| Summary | Introduction Homework has been a part and parcel of schooling in most countries for generations (Gordon, 1980). Yet, most research on homework finds only a meek association between time spent on homework and students' achievement. A plausible explanation for this low association might be students' motivation towards homework (Trautwein et al., 2006). There is some indication that many, if not most, students engage in homework assignments not because of interest or excitement, but rather because of a sense of duty, desire to please, and avoidance of punishment (Walker et al., 2004). In addition to the indication that students' motivation to homework is not as adaptive as is desired, there is reason to hypothesize that the adaptive motivation to homework that students do manifest would decline with the years in school. Students' motivation for homework is arguably a component of students' overall motivation to school. Unfortunately, research suggests that along the years of schooling, students' adaptive motivation to school is declining (e.g. Anderman & Midgly, 1997). It is likely, therefore, that students' motivation to homework would show a similar pattern, with older students expressing less adaptive motivation to homework than younger students do. While early explanations suggested that the decline in motivation is related to developmental changes such as puberty (Simmons & Blyth, 1987), more recent studies have mostly focused on the role of the environment in this motivational change. Specifically, explanations have focused on an increased discrepancy between characteristics of school environments and students' developmental needs. For example, in comparison to elementary schools, teachers in Junior High schools are found to provide less autonomy and less social support to students (Eccles et al., 1993; Midgley et al., 1995). Aims The present study employs Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to investigate the hypothesis that a learning context that supports students' psychological needs may make a difference in students' motivation for homework. Specifically, we investigated how students’ perceptions of their teacher as behaving in a way that supports their psychological needs in homework is related to their intrinsic motivation for homework. We hypothesized that perceived teachers' support of students' needs would mediate the relation between grade-level and student motivation for homework. We also hypothesized that the role of perceived teacher support of needs in student motivation for homework would depend on students' level of expressed needs: perceived teachers support would be related to higher adaptive motivation for homework among students who express high level of needs than among students who express low level of needs. Method Thirty-four 4th grade students and 49 8th grade students from a middle-high class neighborhood in Israel responded to surveys asking about their motivation for homework, their level of need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence in the context of homework and their perceptions of their teacher’s behavior as supporting their needs in the context of homework. The constructs were assessed with established scales (e.g. Grolnick & Ryan 1989; Reeve, et al., 2004) that were modified to focus on homework. Results There was a significant difference between 4th grade (M = 3.37, SD = .90) and 8th grade (M = 2.37, SD = .73) students in intrinsic motivation for homework (t[81] = 5.51, p = .000), with 4th graders reporting significantly higher intrinsic motivation for homework then did 8th graders. The 4th graders (M = 2.83, SD = .93) also reported significantly higher perceived teacher support of their psychological needs than did the 8th graders (M = 1.90, SD = .61) (t[81] = 5.51, p = .000). Following recommendations by Baron and Kenny (1986) for investigating mediation, we established significant correlations between the three variables (grade-level, perceived teacher support, and students' motivation), and ran regression analyses that indicated that the association between grade-level and students’ motivation for homework decreased significantly (Sobell test=-2.381, p<.05) when teachers' support of psychological needs was entered into the equation. In order to investigate the second hypothesis we ran a hierarchical regression with an interaction term. Following Aiken and West (1991), the variables of perceived of teachers’ need support and students’ expressed needs were centered prior to forming the interaction term in order to reduce multicollinearity. The results pointed to a main effect of perceived teacher's need support in predicting students' intrinsic motivation for homework (β=.32, p<.01). In addition, however, the findings indicated that this association was moderated by students' expressed level of needs (interaction term: β=.27,p<.05). Figure 1 presents a plot of the interaction. As can be seen, whereas perceived teachers' need support is associated with an increase in intrinsic motivation for all students, the effect is stronger for those students expressed high level of psychological needs. Discussion and educational significance The normative decline in students’ adaptive motivation in school along years of schooling is a disturbing phenomenon. The findings from this study indicate that students' motivation for homework shows a similar pattern. Since homework has much potential to contribute to students' learning, understanding and intervening in this apparent decline constitutes an important educational task. The findings suggest that teachers’ behavior, as it is perceived by students as supporting their psychological needs, may have an important role in students’ decline of motivation for homework. Moreover, whereas teachers' support of students' psychological needs is likely to promote adaptive motivation among all students, such behavior seems particularly beneficial for students who express high needs—regardless of students' grade-level. The presentation at the conference will include also finding from a larger research project, concerning the mutual contribution students, teachers, and parents to students' motivation for homework while accounting for developmental trajectories and cultural differences. |
| Keywords | Instructional practices Learning environments Student behavior/attitude |
| Appendices | Presentation_idit.jpg |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Idit | Katz | Ben-Gurion University | Israel | katzid@bgu.ac.il | * | |
| Avi | Kaplan | Ben-Gurion University | Israel | akaplan@bgu.ac.il | ||
| Title | Interest Experience in the Classroom: The Role of Autonomy Support and Individual Interest |
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| Abstract | Research based on self-determination theory has found teachers’ instructional behaviors, especially with respect to the support and suppression of students’ autonomy, to influence students’ interest. The present study aims to replicate these findings with intra-individual data from authentic classroom learning situations and, moreover, to investigate whether these effects are equally applicable to all students. Participants were 261 (57% female) 7th-grade students, aged 12 to 14 years. All students were recruited from nine classes in two academic-track secondary schools. After surveying students’ gender, school performance, and individual interest, we assessed students’ interest experience and three aspects of autonomy-related support and suppression after every mathematics, German (native language instruction), and second foreign language lesson over a 3-week period. On average, 25 lesson-specific measures were collected for each student. Hierarchical linear modelling conducted separately for the three subjects provided consistent support for self-determination theory. Students showed higher interest in lessons which they perceived as providing an autonomy-supportive climate (.27 < b < .34, p < .001) or involving them cognitively (.21 < b < .25, p < .001). In contrast, lower levels of interest were reported for lessons where the teachers’ behaviour was perceived as controlling (-.15 < b < -.10, p < .001). However, significant variance components were observed for all effects, suggesting that the effects of autonomy support and control may not be identical for all students. Student characteristics that may moderate these effects will be explored and discussed. |
| Summary | Aims The feeling and emotions that students experience in the classroom, day after day, play an important role in their motivation and learning. The phenomenological experience of being interested has been found to be associated with focused attention, higher cognitive functioning, and learning (Krapp, Hidi, & Renninger, 1992). Self-determination theory (SDT) suggests that teachers’ instructional behaviors with respect to the support and suppression of students’ need for autonomy is crucial for understanding their interest experience in classroom (Assor, Kaplan, & Roth, 2002). Specifically, three aspects of autonomy-related support and suppression that may affect students’ intrinsic motivation have been proposed. First, autonomy-supportive climate refers to teachers’ attempts to understand students’ feelings and thoughts about the learning tasks, and to support students’ personal growth (Assor et al., 2002). Second, controlling behaviors include teachers’ suppression of student opinions and questions, instructional behaviors that disrupt students’ natural rhythm of learning, and other behaviors that inhibit the realization of students’ need for autonomy (see Assor et al., 2002; Reeve & Jang, 2006). Third, cognitive autonomy support emphasizes teachers’ provision of support during students’ engagement with cognitive activities; e.g., explicitly explaining the purposes of the task at hand and its links to the learning concepts, or scaffolding understanding by activating students’ prior knowledge (Stefanou, Perencevich, DiCintio, & Turner, 2004). To date, most empirical evidence for the first two aspects – autonomy-supportive climate and controlling behaviors – has been based on inter-individual research paradigms, such as group comparison. Moreover, empirical studies of the effects of cognitive autonomy support are still lacking. Therefore, the present study aims, first, to replicate the effects of autonomy support and control with intra-individual data from authentic classroom learning situations. Students’ own motivational resources have also been shown to affect their interest experience in learning situations. Thus, the second aim of the study is to investigate the effects of the three aspects of autonomy support and suppression emanating from the learning context, relative to the effects of individual interest as a personal motivational resource. Last but not least, SDT suggests that the beneficial effect of autonomy support applies to all students because the need for autonomy is universal. The present study thus explores whether the effects of autonomy support are equal for all students. Research Design Participants were 261 (57% female) 7th-grade students, who were in the first year of secondary school, and aged between 12 and 14 years. All students were recruited from nine classes in two academic-track schools. Parental consent was received for 90% of the students in all nine classes to participate. A majority (84%) of participants reported German as their mother tongue. A short lesson-specific questionnaire was used to measure students’ interest experience and perceived autonomy support during lessons for 3 consecutive weeks. Lesson-specific measures were collected in all regular mathematics, German, and second foreign language lessons. On average, 25 lesson-specific measures were collected for each student. Scales showed good internal consistency, with an average Cronbach’s alpha of .90 for interest experience, .92 for perceived autonomy-supportive climate, .66 for perceived controlling behaviour, and .77 for cognitive autonomy support. Students’ gender, school performance and individual interest were measured at a prior session. Results Results from separate hierarchical linear models (HLM) for the three subject domains provided consistent support for self-determination theory. Concerning the first research question, students’ interest experience during lessons was predicted by the three aspects of autonomy support and suppression at within-student level (level one). Results showed that students had higher interest in lessons which they perceived as providing an autonomy-supportive climate (.27 < b < .34, p < .001) or involving them cognitively (.21 < b < .25, p < .001). In contrast, lower levels of interest were reported for lessons where the teachers’ behaviour was perceived as controlling (-.15 < b < -.10, p < .001). Regarding the second research question, when students’ gender, school performance, and individual interest, as well as the person-means of their autonomy-related perceptions were incorporated into HLM models, individual interest and the three autonomy-related perceptions became significant. These results indicate that students’ interest experience was affected not only by the mean perceived autonomy-related support and suppression in the classroom, but also by students’ stable individual interest (-24 < b < .29, p < .001) in the subject domain. However, significant variance components were observed for all effects. This result provides some initial answers to our third question, suggesting that the effects of the three aspects of autonomy-related support and suppression during the lesson may not be identical for all students. Student characteristics that may moderate these effects were explored and discussed. Theoretical and Educational Significance The present study re-examines the assumed beneficial effects of autonomy support on students’ intrinsic interest. First, in line with self-determination theory, the effects of an autonomy-supportive climate and controlling behaviors during instruction were replicated with intra-individual data from authentic classroom learning situations. In addition, the study provides first insights into the effects of cognitive autonomy support as a distinctive aspect of autonomy support. At the same time, we have shown that students’ interest experience is not solely influenced by the autonomy support provided by the learning context, but that students’ own motivational resource of individual interest also contributes to shaping their interest experience. Therefore, both situational factors and personal factors should be taken into consideration when investigating students’ psychological state of interest. The results also revealed that some students seem to benefit more from teachers’ autonomy support than others. To date, research based on self-determination theory has tended not to focus on such individual differences. Factors that may moderate the effects of teachers’ autonomy support in the classroom will be discussed in the presentation. |
| Keywords | Classroom research Instructional practices Motivation |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Yi-Miau | Tsai | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | tsai@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | * | |
| Mareike | Kunter | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | kunter@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
| Oliver | Luedtke | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | luedtke@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
| Ulrich | Trautwein | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | trautwein@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
| Title | The effect of an extrinsic rather than intrinsic goal pursuit and of extrinsic rather than intrinsic goal promotion on performance, persistence and ethical functioning |
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| Abstract | The aim of this research was to examine contradictory hypotheses that can be derived from self-determination Theory (SDT; Kasser & Ryan, 1996) and the match-hypothesis (Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000) regarding the impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal pursuit and intrinsic versus extrinsic goal promotion by the educational environment on optimal learning and well-being. From SDT-perspective, the pursuit of intrinsic goals is characterised by an in-ward orientation and is consistent with the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs, whereas the pursuit of extrinsic goals is characterised by a focus on external signs of worth and tends to be unrelated to basic need satisfaction. Therefore, these different types of goals should be differentially linked to psychological well-being and optimal learning. According to the match-hypothesis, the match between one’s own personal goals and the goals promoted by the social environment should matter in explaining individuals’ well-being and learning, so that extrinsic goal oriented individuals would function most optimally when being exposed to an extrinsic goal environment. One correlational study among highschool students (N = 246) and one experimental study among 5th and 6th grade children (N=138) could not provide evidence for the match-hypothesis. Instead, the pursuit of intrinsic relative to extrinsic goals positively predicted well-being and negatively predicted externalizing problem behavior and internal distress among extrinsic goal oriented individuals who find themselves in a learning climate that emphasizes the pursuit of extrinsic goals. Furthermore, it was shown that the induction of extrinsic relative to intrinsic goals as a means to motivate children to put effort in the learning activity at hand undermines performance and persistence, even among learners who strongly value the pursuit of extrinsic goals. We conclude that students, teachers and, more generally, school principals might want to focus on the promotion of intrinsic goals to facilitate learning, performance, and psychological well-being. |
| Summary | Aims The general aim of the present research was to examine contradictory hypotheses that can be derived from self-determination Theory (SDT; Kasser & Ryan, 1996; Vansteenkiste, Lens, & Deci, 2006) and the match-hypothesis (Sagiv & Schwartz, 200) regarding the impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal pursuit and intrinsic versus extrinsic goal promotion on optimal learning and well-being. SDT distinguishes between the quality of goals that people pursue (i.e., intrinsic vs. extrinsic). Examples of intrinsic goals are self-development, affiliation, and community contribution, whereas examples of extrinsic goals are financial success, physical attractiveness, and social recognition. The pursuit of intrinsic goals is characterised by an in-ward orientation and is generally consistent with the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs. In contrast, the pursuit of extrinsic goals is characterised by a focus on external signs of worth and by impression management and tends to be unrelated to basic need satisfaction. Because of their differential linkage to need satisfaction, the pursuit of intrinsic relative to extrinsic goals should differentially predict learners’ psychological well-being, performance and persistence. Moreover, educational environments that promote intrinsic over extrinsic goals should yield similar effects on learners’ optimal functioning. These hypotheses are in contrast with the match-hypothesis, which suggests that the motivational effect of goals does not depend on the quality or content of the pursued or promoted goal by itself but on the extent to which there is a match or fit between the content of one’s goals and the type of goals that are promoted by the social environment. As a result, extrinsic goal oriented individuals would function most optimally in extrinsic goal oriented environments and the promotion of extrinsic goals would yield positive effects for the well-being and performance of extrinsic goal oriented individuals. Methodology/Research Design We tested these hypotheses with correlational and experimental studies. In each of these two studies, individuals’ goal pursuit was assessed with the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996). A first, correlational study was conducted among high school business and educational students (N=248) to examine the effect of intrinsic vs. extrinsic goal pursuit on psychological well-being. A second, experimental study was conducted among 5th and 6th grade intrinsic and extrinsic goal oriented children (N=138) who were placed in either an intrinsic or extrinsic goal induction condition, which matched or mismatched their personal goal orientation. Dependent variables constituted autonomous motivation, performance and persistence instead of well-being in this second study. Findings With respect to Study 1, independent sample t-testing indicated that there were large mean level differences in intrinsic and extrinsic goal pursuit among business and educational students, with business students being more extrinsic goal oriented and educational students being more intrinsic goal oriented. These mean level differences are likely to reflect the different types of goals that are promoted within these two educational environments. Furthermore, extrinsic goal pursuit was found to negatively predict psychological well-being and to be positively related to drug use and internal distress, whereas the opposite pattern of correlations emerged for intrinsic goal pursuit. Most importantly, the effects of intrinsic vs. extrinsic goal pursuit were not moderated by the department of students, suggesting that even business students suffer psychologically from strongly valuing extrinsic goals which are likely to be salient in their own educational environment. With respect to Study 2, extrinsic relative to intrinsic goal induction as a means to motivate children to put effort in a learning activity was found to undermine autonomous motivation, performance and persistence. Most importantly, the main effects of intrinsic vs. extrinsic goal induction were not moderated by the personal goals the children held. Theoretical and Educational Significance of the Findings Although more research is needed on these topics, we tend to conclude that students might do well to pursue intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals even if they find themselves in an extrinsic goal oriented enviroment. Similarly, teachers and school principles might want to focus on the promotion of intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals to facilitate learning and performance, even if their students value extrinsic rather than intrinsic goals. In other words, there is no need to adjust one’s teaching style (i.e., the type of goals one emphasizes) depending on the goal orientation of the students, as all students seem to benefit from being exposed to an intrinsic goal oriented environment. At the theoretical level, the present studies could not confirm the match-hypothesis but instead provide evidence for SDT’s claim that intrinsic and extrinsic goals yield differential effects because they are of a different quality. |
| Keywords | Higher education Learning environments Motivation |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Bart | Duriez | University of Leuven | Belgium | Bart.Duriez@psy.kuleuven.be | * | |
| Bart | Soenenes | University of Gent | Belgium | Bart.Soenens@UGent.be | ||
| Willy | Lens | University of Leuven | Belgium | Willy.Lens@psy.kuleuven.be | ||
| Maarten | Vansteenkiste | University of Gent | Belgium | Maarten.Vansteenkiste@UGent.be | ||
| Title | Congruence of Students’ Goals: Relations to Subjective Well-Being and Interest |
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| Abstract | The present study explored how the congruence between individual intrinsic and extrinsic goals and perceptions of fellow students’ goals is associated with subjective well-being (SWB) and interest in the field of study. Self-determination theory (SDT) distinguishes two classes of goals in terms of their content: intrinsic life goals are concordant with basic psychological needs and thus positively related to SWB, whereas extrinsic goals are focused on attaining the recognition of others, and are assumed to be negatively related to SWB. An environmental-match perspective places less emphasis on the content of a goal and maintains that congruence between individual and environmental goals is crucial for SWB. The role of the content and person-environment fit of life goals for SWB and interest was examined in a sample of over 1700 German university students. Both individual life goals and the perceived life goals of fellow students were assessed. In line with a self-determination perspective on life goals, extrinsic goals were negatively and intrinsic goals positively associated with well-being. In line with a person-environment fit perspective, congruence between individual goal profiles and the perceived goal profiles of fellow students was positively associated with SWB and interest. Subsequent in-depth analyses showed that congruence between individual and perceived environmental goals was more beneficial for SWB than incongruence in the case of affiliation goals, and that agreement on affiliation goals being important was related to higher SWB than agreement on affiliation goals being unimportant. Thus, our results suggested that both the content of life goals and the person-environment fit were related to SWB and interest. More generally, students’ perceptions of their environment were related to their emotional and motivational experiences, substantiating the notion that “the people make the place.” |
| Summary | Aims Educational environments play a significant role in students’ experience and behavior. The present study examines students in different fields of university study, i.e., in educational environments that are – to a greater degree than school classes – (self-)selected by students according to their interests, achievements, abilities and possibly life goals. Fields of study thus constitute distinct educational environments that can be characterized in terms of the content covered, but also in terms of characteristics of the student body (see Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000). Numerous studies have shown that congruence between employees in terms of work goals is associated with enhanced well-being and work satisfaction (see, e.g., Meglino, Ravlin, & Atkins, 1989). For life goals or values, Sagiv and Schwartz (2000) showed that aspirations to power are negatively associated with subjective well-being (SWB) in psychology students but positively in economics students. They attributed these findings to the fact that economics students who endorse power values fit in well with their environment, whereas psychology students do not. Kasser and Ahuvia (2002) presented another point of view. Based on self-determination theory (SDT, Deci & Ryan, 2002), they argued that it is not the congruence between individual and environmental goals that affects well-being, but the content of the respective goals. They differentiated between the ‘extrinsic’ goals of financial success, image, and popularity, and the ‘intrinsic’ goals of affiliation, community contribution, and personal growth (Kasser & Ryan, 1996), and predicted that higher intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals would be associated with higher SWB, regardless of whether the individual fitted in well with the context. This presentation investigates two questions. First, we ask whether congruence with fellow students’ profiles of intrinsic and extrinsic goals is associated with enhanced SWB and interest. Second, to gain further insights into the relationship between the content and congruence of goals, we consider the specific profile of the relation between individual and environmental goals and its relation to SWB. Is it more beneficial to agree with the other students that intrinsic goals are important and extrinsic goals are unimportant than to agree that intrinsic goals are unimportant and extrinsic goals are important? Methodology/Design: A total of 1735 students enrolled in 156 different majors at several German universities participated. Mean age was 21.4 years (SD = 0.78); 61.3% of participants were female (> 95% Caucasian). Eight 3-item scales based on the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996) were administered to evaluate the intrinsic goals of affiliation, community contribution, and personal growth; the extrinsic goals of financial success, popularity, and image; and the additional goals of hedonism and health, which cannot be clearly defined as intrinsic nor extrinsic. Alpha coefficients for the subscales ranged from .73 to .86; the mean was .81. Environmental goals were measured by administering the same life goal items to each student with the instruction, “In your opinion, how important are the following goals for the majority of your fellow students?” Alpha coefficients ranged between .68 and .86, with a mean of .81. Findings Our findings suggest that both the content of goals and the congruence between individual and perceived environmental goals were related to SWB and interest. First, in support of SDT, an emphasis on extrinsic (relative to intrinsic) goals was negatively associated with SWB and interest, whereas an emphasis on intrinsic (relative to extrinsic) goals was positively related to SWB and interest. Second, we tested whether the congruence between individual and environmental goals was associated with SWB, as predicted by the environmental-match perspective. To this end, we considered the degree of congruence between a student’s own goal profile and the perceived goal profile of his or her fellow students. By considering goal profiles, these analyses neglect the content of goals. An index of congruence was derived for each student by computing profile correlations between his or her eight individual goal scores and the eight contextual goal scores. The higher the profile correlation, the higher the congruence between individual and perceived goals. Correlations between the congruence index and indicators of SWB and interest were then computed. As expected from an environmental-match perspective, the degree of congruence between the individual and the perceived environmental goal profile was positively associated with SWB and interest in the field of study. Third, in-depth analyses were performed to investigate the effects of the content and person-environment fit simultaneously. Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology (Edwards, 2002) were used to analyze how the specific configuration of two variables (individual goal and perceived environmental goal) affects a third variable (SWB). Analyses were conducted for each goal separately. Results for the affiliation goal, for example, showed that a) SWB was highest for students who reported having high affiliation goals and also perceived their fellow students to have high affiliation goals (i.e. match), b) SWB was lower for students who reported having low affiliation goals and also perceived their fellow students to have low affiliation goals (i.e. match), c) SWB was lowest in cases of incongruence between the individual and the perceived environment where individual affiliation goals were low, but environmental goals were high (i.e. mismatch). Theoretical/Educational Significance The present study revealed two important issues. First, profile correlation analyses showed that the congruence of students’ life goals with the perceived life goals of their fellow students was associated with SWB and interest. Nevertheless, the content of goals matters: our second major finding, from a more in-depth analysis, showed that while congruence on affiliation goals was more beneficial than incongruence, it was crucial whether affiliation goals were deemed to be important or not. Note, however, that results for the other life goals were not as clear-cut. More generally speaking, our study showed that exploring how students perceive their environments seems to be a viable research avenue. Perceptions of environmental goals were related to the emotional experience of individuals in different fields of study, thus substantiating the notion that “the people make the place” (Schneider, 1987). |
| Keywords | Emotion Higher education Learning environments |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Husemann | Nicole | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | husemann@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | * | |
| Ulrich | Trautwein | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | trautwein@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
| Oliver | Luedtke | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | luedtke@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
| Gabriel | Nagy | Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin | Germany | nagy@mpib-berlin.mpg.de | ||
