Trajectories of subject-interests development and influence factors in higher education

Abstract

It is a well-studied phenomenon, that throughout the course of studying at university, the motivation for the study program decreases. Correlation between motivation and learners’ behaviour, for example the learning process, achievement or, in the worst case, dropout exist. So there is a need for understanding the development of motivation in detail, like that of subject-interests, and for identifying influence factors, especially for higher education. This panel study examined the development of 4,345 students in higher education. Growth mixture models for subject-interests identify two classes of trajectories: “descending interest” and “continuously high interest”. In a next step, the analysis shows that gender, university entrance score, academic field and occupational aspiration influence membership of the classes. The results are discussed with respect to their consequences for education programs, but also with respect to possible new research questions.

Protecting Philippine Dance Traditions via Education of Tomorrow's Pedagogues: The Role of Individual Interest and School Engagement

“…In terms of trait, there are two well-known types: situational interest is the increased attention toward content and is typically described as a student who is willing to learn with a constructive feeling about it in a particular moment (Fastrich & Murayama, 2020;Schmidt & Rotgans, 2021;Wong et al, 2020), while individual interest is associated to a continuing propensity to reengage with a specific content over time (Hong et al, 2019;Knekta et al, 2020;Quinlan & Renninger, 2022). In addition, this construct is always intellectualized as being content-specific (Kang et al, 2021;Wild, 2022), which proposes that a student may be interested in a particular subject but not in the other way around, or vice versa. Also, interest has been characterized as a complex construct that encompasses two domains: the affective (e.g., positive feeling) and cognitive (e.g., perceived importance) domains (Aslan et al, 2021;Svenningsson et al, 2022).…”

The Nexus between individual interest and school engagement in bolstering Physical Culture for a habitual healthy régime: a case of a state university

“…Contrarily, individual interest is a trait that endures over time and is tied to one's consistent inclination toward a certain subject [34,35,36]. Additionally, interest is often interpreted intellectually as being content-specific [37,38]. Thus, there is a wide range in how seriously different students take Physical Education or other subjects.…”

Predictors of University Attrition: Looking for an Equitable and Sustainable Higher Education

“…The failure and abandonment of university studies are issues that concern all countries because of the personal, social, and economic costs they incur. In fact, the recent scientific literature [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] shows a committed and credible interest in fully addressing this need for educational intervention to provide the necessary resources, strategies, and methodologies to the educational scenarios of the 21st century, appealing to the quality of teaching in higher education and targeting the specific educational needs of university students, especially those who are at risk of social exclusion or have objective indicators of socioeconomic vulnerability.…”

“…Third, in terms of student motivation, it has been shown that there is a clear relationship between this variable and university dropout cross-culturally, obtaining the same clear positive tie between high motivation and a lower probability of university dropout in different countries and diverse cultural settings [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73]. In fact, a correlation has been found between motivation and positive behavior of students, as well as favorable involvement in the learning process and academic achievement [7,46,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81], in such a way that the most motivated students show less disruptive and/or challenging behavior, greater commitment to the learning process, and higher probabilities of achieving academic achievement. In the same way, recent studies have shown that the predictive value of motivation with respect to the probability of dropping out is clear, revealing that students with greater motivation are more resistant to the problem of dropping out, showing greater probabilities of completing the academic year [7,82,83].…”

“…In fact, a correlation has been found between motivation and positive behavior of students, as well as favorable involvement in the learning process and academic achievement [7,46,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81], in such a way that the most motivated students show less disruptive and/or challenging behavior, greater commitment to the learning process, and higher probabilities of achieving academic achievement. In the same way, recent studies have shown that the predictive value of motivation with respect to the probability of dropping out is clear, revealing that students with greater motivation are more resistant to the problem of dropping out, showing greater probabilities of completing the academic year [7,82,83].…”