The effect of parental supporting styles on student academic motivations over years

This study aims to examine how students’ academic motivations changes throughout their secondary school years, and whether parental support for autonomy can affect student motivations. Approximately 6,000 students repeated measures of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study were used, and a series of multi-level models, growth mixture models, and multinomial logistic models were applied for data analyses. Main findings are as follows: First, intrinsic motivation decreased during middle school years and increased during high school years, while extrinsic motivation showed opposite directions. Second, parents’ both supporting styles, i.e., support for autonomy and control, were positively associated with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations after controlling for achievement. Third, the three distinctive latent classes were identified depending on how intrinsic motivation changed: ①consistently decreasing, ② decreasing and then increasing, and ③ consistently increasing. Fourth, parental support for autonomy decreased the probability of belonging in the group whose intrinsic motivation consistently declined over the years.