Stability and change of secondary school students' motivation profiles in mathematics: Effects of a student intervention

There is high agreement that motivation is an important factor for successful learning processes and outcomes. But how do students differ in terms of motivation and how do these differences affect the effectiveness of a motivation intervention? As an intervention interacts with students' characteristics, students' heterogeneity must be considered and homogeneous intervention effects must be critically examined. This study aimed to identify motivation profiles of a specifically vulnerable student group, namely students in the lowest ability tier in the learning of mathematics. Within the framework of self-determination theory, we investigated how these profiles changed during Grade 7 and Grade 8. Furthermore, the study examined whether a particular intervention setting aimed at promoting positive emotions and motivation in learning had an impact on the patterns of change in the specific motivation profiles compared to students in the control condition. A latent profile analysis based on self-reported intrinsic, identified, introjected, and external regulation of 348 students revealed three motivation profiles, consisting of (a) low mixed, (b) high-mixed, and (c) self-determined. Results of the latent transition analysis indicated that the majority of students tended to remain in the same profile and also revealed different effects of the intervention on different motivation profiles. The intervention seemed to be better tailored to students in the low-mixed motivation profile than to students in other profiles. This result highlights the nature of differential effects between students.