Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher educational institutions worldwide switched to emergency distance learning in early 2020. The less structured environment of distance learning forced students to regulate their learning and motivation more independently. According to self-determination theory (SDT), satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and social relatedness affects intrinsic motivation, which in turn relates to more active or passive learning behavior. As the social context plays a major role for basic need satisfaction, distance learning may impair basic need satisfaction and thus intrinsic motivation and learning behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between basic need satisfaction and procrastination and persistence in the context of emergency distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-sectional study. We also investigated the mediating role of intrinsic motivation in this relationship. Furthermore, to test the universal importance of SDT for intrinsic motivation and learning behavior under these circumstances in different countries, we collected data in Europe, Asia and North America. A total of N = 15,462 participants from Albania, Austria, China, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Kosovo, Lithuania, Poland, Malta, North Macedonia, Romania, Sweden, and the US answered questions regarding perceived competence, autonomy, social relatedness, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, persistence, and sociodemographic background. Our results support SDT’s claim of universality regarding the relation between basic psychological need fulfilment, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, and persistence. However, whereas perceived competence had the highest direct effect on procrastination and persistence, social relatedness was mainly influential via intrinsic motivation.
The sudden switch to distance education to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered adolescents’ lives around the globe. The present research aims to identify psychological characteristics that relate to adolescents’ well-being in terms of positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, and key characteristics of their learning behavior in a situation of unplanned, involuntary distance education. Following Self-Determination Theory, experienced competence, autonomy, and relatedness were assumed to relate to active learning behavior (i.e., engagement and persistence), and negatively relate to passive learning behavior (i.e., procrastination), mediated via positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation. Data were collected via online questionnaires in altogether eight countries from Europe, Asia, and North America (N = 25,305) and comparable results across countries were expected. Experienced competence was consistently found to relate to positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, and, in turn, active learning behavior in terms of engagement and persistence. The study results further highlight the role of perceived relatedness for positive emotion. The high proportions of explained variance speak in favor of taking these central results into account when designing distance education in times of COVID-19.
Modern technologies have become an integral part in our society and are increasingly shaping the teaching of mathematics at every level of education. In Austria, the academic school year 2021/22 will undergo an extensive digitalisation; all students who start secondary school will be equipped with a digital device. Our paper reports on anticipated concerns and benefits of mathematics teachers who are required to integrate technologies into teaching mathematics at the first year of secondary education. We conducted an exploratory interview study with secondary mathematics teachers before schools received their digital devices. The data was analysed with techniques based on grounded theory approaches. We discovered that for teachers the anticipated concerns and benefits were: (A) discrimination of students by technologies, (B) by using technologies, students may lose basic mathematical knowledge and skills, (C) individual and playful acquisition of new technological competencies by teachers, and (D) using technologies to enhance differentiation and individualisation in mathematics teaching. One of the key findings of our study is that mathematics teachers in Austria feel capable enough to integrate technologies into the teaching and learning of mathematics at the beginning of secondary education and do not express the need for further technical training. This finding contradicts previous studies and provides a starting point for future investigations.
Information technology plays an increasingly prominent role in our personal and professional lives. It also plays an important role in schools, and especially in mathematics education. To realise their full potential in education, technologies should be designed in a way that addresses the characteristics of the target students. In the context of learning mathematics, students often experience anxiety with regard to the content that needs to be learnt; therefore, this work considers mathematics anxiety as a characteristic that should be particularly relevant when designing technologies that assist with teaching and learning mathematics. The development of personas, i.e., prototypical and simplified user descriptions, is a widely used tool in user experience (UX) research that supports design processes. In this methodological paper, we combine this UX methodology with a grounded theory approach. This combination of methodologies could facilitate the establishment of guidelines for developing personas representing secondary school mathematics students, which constitutes the goal of this paper. We review existing persona development techniques in other fields and adapt them to the context of secondary mathematics education using qualitative secondary data. Our aim is to provide a research approach that produces a better understanding of students’ characteristics, needs, and fears. Despite limitations in terms of the amount of data included in developing and piloting this methodology, this work forms the basis for increasing the usability of educational technologies and for adapting them to individual learning styles to reduce mathematics anxiety.
Higher education institutions in Austria switched to emergency distance learning in March 2020 to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Due to the sudden change, students and instructors scarcely had time to adjust to the new demands. Initial cross-sectional studies pointed to the risks of emergency distance learning for students’ intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and learning behavior. We investigated the longitudinal effects between the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs (competence, autonomy, and social relatedness), intrinsic motivation, and self-regulated learning, applying a cross-lagged panel model. A sample of N = 3,286 students answered four online questionnaires between April 2020 and July 2021. All measured constructs remained stable during that time span. The satisfaction of the basic needs was cross-sectionally related to intrinsic motivation. We found no cross-lagged effects on intrinsic motivation. Self-regulated learning showed small but significant cross-lagged positive effects on intrinsic motivation at all time points. Implications and future research perspectives are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.