Motivation – a topic on everyone’s mind in this remote environment. It is of particular interest in non-credit remedial mathematics courses, where the carrot for success is sometimes less evident for students.
Prior to the pandemic, I conducted research in pre-university mathematics courses, trying to identify if specific motivational personas were exhibited in these courses and if some personas were better set up for future success (Daudet, 2020).
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) denotes students can exhibit varying levels of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation (Ryan and Deci, 2000), where amotivation appears in individuals who feel they lack competence or question why they are pursuing specific activities (Lim and Chapman, 2015b).
Using the Academic Motivation Toward Mathematics Scale (Lim and Chapman, 2015a) and cluster analysis, four distinct personas emerged: Dually Motivated (students motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors), Apathetic (students low in both categories), Motivated Questioners (students with some extrinsic motivation but highly amotivated), and amotivated students (students exclusively high in amotivation).
Unlike findings from other researchers who primarily observed credited mathematics courses, my research lacked a persona of students who were exclusively high in intrinsic motivation, signaling that students in remediation programs may not immediately be drawn to success solely by the feelings of stimulation, accomplishment, or knowledge acquisition. Rather, they may go into courses relying heavily on external rewards or punishments to keep motivated.
This reliance on extrinsic motivation is a bit problematic as past research has identified that students are more successful the more self-determined they are, exhibited through higher levels of intrinsic motivation (Taylor et al., 2014).
My findings were consistent with this concept, where students with higher levels of intrinsic motivation were more successful and more engaged with course content. Alternatively, amotivated students performed and engaged the least with course content.
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