First-Year Female College Students’ Academic Motivation as a Function of Perceived Parenting Styles: A Contextual Perspective

Abstract

The connections between three parenting styles (authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative) and three motivational constructs (extrinsic/intrinsic and amotivation for learning) of 202 Palestinian-Arab young females were tested. This study used structural equation modeling statistical method and smallest space analysis (SSA, a variant of multidimensional scaling MDS) to compute the complex relationships indicated in previous research between the examined variables. Results showed that the participants perceived their parents as more authoritative than authoritarian or permissive. According to the path analysis results, the authoritative parenting style was negatively connected to amotivation, the authoritarian was positively related to extrinsic motivation, and a positive relation was found between permissiveness and amotivation for learning. Only the SSA has confirmed the postulated connection between the authoritative parenting style and intrinsic motivation variables. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Parenting Styles as a Gateway for Girls Education Accomplishment: A Case Study of Female African and Asian Students in a Chinese University

“…In this case, authoritarian parenting style exercised by male parents could be implied as a contrivance that evoke intrinsic motivation mainly by stressing the importance of external goals, such as attaining higher levels of education, explaining that they care about their children well-being. These results are aligning with those found in a research done on Palestinian-Arab female students in Israel [32] indicated that authoritarian parents have positive influence on Arab adolescents' perceived psychological well-being of intrinsic motivation.…”

The academic climate and student-teacher relationship as determinants of academic motivation

“…One of the most important theories of motivation as a predictor of academic performance, but also of well-being (Reid et al, 2019) is the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), formulated by Deci and Ryan in 1985(1985, cited in Alt, 2015bClark & Schroth, 2010;Noyens et al, 2019;Smith et al, 2020). Unlike previous theories, which present a structure of motivation with two factors: motivated behavior and lack of motivation, the theory of self-determination proposes a more complete understanding of the concept and argues that in the case of motivated behavior we can talk about two other motivating factors: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (Alt, 2015a;Clark & Schroth, 2010;Joe et al, 2017;Kindelberger et al, 2019;Öz, 2016;Smith et al, 2020). The authors of this theory consider that for each individual the behavior is determined by a combination of the two types of motivations, intrinsic and extrinsic (Henderson-King & Smith, 2006).…”

“…It has been observed that students rarely show only one type of motivation, but rather they are motivated in the learning process either intrinsically or extrinsically, or even amotivated, depending on the context or personality of the student (Alt, 2015a;Clark & Schroth, 2010;McGeown et al, 2014). The degree to which students are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to engage in academic activities has an influence on how they relate to the educational context (Henderson-King & Smith, 2006).…”

“…It is considered that people generally perform less intrinsically motivated activities than extrinsically motivated ones (Tang et al, 2018). Extrinsic motivation refers to involvement in learning due to external factors, such as obtaining a reward or recognition (Alt, 2015a;McGeown et al, 2014). In the case of extrinsic motivation, the SDT also distinguishes three subtypes, defined according to the degree of self-determination or autonomy given by external motives that have been internalized, namely external regulation, introjected regulation and identified regulation (Henderson-King & Smith, 2006;Maulana & Opdenakker, 2014;Tang et al, 2018).…”

“…Lastly, amotivation is defined as a lack of motivation or a general ambivalence towards an activity (Reid et al, 2019). The amotivated students perceive a lack of correspondence between their behavior and the results obtained and believe that their effort will not change the result, which is why they experience a feeling of incompetence and lack of control (Alt, 2015a;Smith et al, 2020). They usually feel detached from their work and precisely because they do not expect any intrinsic or extrinsic reward, there is a risk that their participation in the activity will eventually cease (Alt, 2015a).…”