DescriptionIn this study, I revealed changes in academic motivational components while students were completing an academic task. The sample consisted of teacher education graduate students enrolled in an educational assessment summer course. The academic task was an assessment portfolio that the students could use after the course when they applied for teaching jobs and as an aid in their teaching. The task was designed to be meaningful to the students and to enhance their intrinsic motivation. It was constructivist in nature and allowed the students to practice the skills they learned within their own fields. I measured value and expectancy components of motivation at a task-specific level while students completed this assignment over the duration of the 4-week summer course.
I measured academic motivation at a task-specific level to provide empirical support for modern expectancy-value theory. Because motivational constructs were found to have more predictive power when measured at a domain-specific measure compared to global measures, measuring the motivational constructs of expectancy and value at a task-specific level was expected to significantly predict academic performance and self-reported behavior as well. Additionally, measuring motivational constructs at a task-specific level presented a different way to examine motivational constructs.
The theorists of modern expectancy-value theory have demonstrated links that exist between the motivational constructs described in their theory and those in other academic motivational theories. In this study, I provided additional support to this effort by demonstrating that the description of intrinsic value more closely matched that of constructs from other theoretical perspectives. Intrinsic value is a component within task value in expectancy-value theory defined as the enjoyment one experiences while completing a task and the interest one has in the task. I hypothesized that interest and enjoyment, constructs used interchangeably to define intrinsic value, were distinct constructs that varied during the completion of an academic task. The results of this study supported this hypothesis. The results also showed that the constructs varied in opposite directions over time as the students completed the academic task. These findings support changes in the conceptualization of intrinsic value in order to incorporate these distinct constructs into the model.