Looking Beyond Quantity: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study on How Students Regulate Their Motivation Over Time

• In Event: Motivation, Belonging, and Help-Seeking in Academic Contexts

Abstract

Despite growing interest in motivational regulation, we still know little about how these processes are integrated in students’ lived experiences and how they evolve over time. We examined how undergraduates in a calculus course (N = 223) regulate their motivation throughout the semester. Adopting an intensive longitudinal qualitative approach, we asked students weekly about how they would implement a specific motivational regulation strategy in the upcoming week. After 13 weeks of data collection, a total of 1,647 open-ended responses were analyzed using a thematic analysis. We identified various approaches that students used to engage in each strategy, highlighting the nuanced differences in how they were applied. Furthermore, a case-level longitudinal analysis revealed how students can refine these processes over time.

Authors

• Yeo-eun Kim, Sungkyunkwan University

• Wenting Song, Florida State University

• Xinyu Liu, Florida State University

• Laurel Garrison, Florida State University

• Patrick N. Beymer, University of Cincinnati