Side effects of academic engagement? How boys’ and girls’ well-being is related to their engagement and motivational regulation

ABSTRACT

While female students are more successful and show more behavioural engagement at school than male students, they also report lower levels of subjective well-being. This study examines how motivational regulation interacts with school engagement in predicting subjective well-being of male and female students. In questionnaire data from a representative sample of Flemish students in the academic track (N = 3452, age 13–14) female students reported lower subjective well-being, more engagement, and more autonomous than controlled motivation compared to male students. Multilevel-analyses, carried out separately for female and male students, revealed that for both genders, subjective well-being was positively associated with engagement and negatively associated with a more controlled than autonomous motivation. For female students only, motivational regulation significantly interacted with engagement in predicting their well-being. The negative association between having more controlled than autonomous motivation and subjective well-being was less strong for female students showing higher school engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective well-being
• academic engagement
• motivational regulation
• gender differences
• self-determination theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The project ‘Teaching in the bed of Procrustes’, which provided the data for the present study, was financed by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (Project Number: SBO 110020).

Notes on contributors

Ursula Kessels

Ursula Kessels earned her doctoral degree in psychology and is full professor for Educational Research/Heterogeneity at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her research interests include beliefs about science and the role of gender and ethnic stereotypes for students' motivation, well-being, self-concepts, and evaluation by their teachers.

Mieke Van Houtte

Mieke Van Houtte is full professor and head of the research team CuDOS (Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Belgium). Her research interests cover diverse topics within the sociology of education, particularly the effects of structural and compositional school features on several diverse outcomes for students and teachers, and sexual minorities. She is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.