A comparison of Russian and Philippine secondary school students on their sociomotivational relationships in school: A motivation typology

ABSTRACT

Previous cross-national studies on social motivation among secondary students from individualistic societies such as Germany and Canada found four different motivation types (MT) varying in class size: (a) teacher-dependent MT, (b) peer-dependent MT, (c) teacher- and peer-dependent MT, and (d) teacher- and peer-independent MT. The current cross-national study expands the knowledge on the Motivation Typology by examining students from collectivistic countries such as the Russian Federation (n = 396) and the Philippines (n = 1014). By applying a multigroup confirmatory latent class analysis (MCLCA) in Mplus, to identify latent groups with similar response patterns, four different motivation types were confirmed, which varied in their class size considerably. While in Russia the majority of students were assigned to the teacher- and peer-dependent MT (about 57%), most of the students from the Philippines were assigned to the teacher- and peer-independent MT (about 85%). These results indicate that students from diverse collectivist backgrounds perceive their sociomotivational relationships related to motivation quite differently.

KEYWORDS:

• social motivation
• peers
• teachers
• multigroup confirmatory latent class analysis
• Russian Federation
• Philippines

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation [Schumpeter Fellowship, II/84 452].

Notes on contributors

Frances Hoferichter

Frances Hoferichter is research associate at the University of Greifswald, faculty of School Pedagogy, and received her PhD in psychology from the Free University Berlin. She has a strong interest in how individual (e.g., personality) as well as contextual aspects (e.g., social relationships) impact learning with a strong focus on stress, test anxiety, and achievement motivation from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary point of view with the goal to support resilience building among students.

Olga Bakadorova

Olga Bakadorova received her PhD in Educational Science at the Free University Berlin in 2015. Since then she has been engaged in teacher-training education at the University of Greifswald, Germany. Her research interests include the interplay of school self-concept and social relations in adolescence, cultural dimensions of motivational processes, as well as development of school-based prevention and intervention strategies, aimed at protecting adolescents’ motivation from decline.

Diana Raufelder

Diana Raufelder is head of the institute of education with a chair in school pedagogy at the university Greifswald. She has a PhD in anthropology and a PhD in psychology. She is the leader of the interdisciplinary Junior Research Group SELF, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Her primary area of research focuses on the social and emotional aspects of teacher–student and student–student relationships, with a special emphasis on their meaning for scholastic motivation and learning processes.

Marilou B. Francisco

Marilou Francisco is a professional counselor and a licensed psychologist in the Philippines. She works as a school counselor in the Child Development Center (CDC) of the Ateneo de Manila University. She graduated with her PhD at the University of Sto. Tomas, Manila, with extensive research in student engagement, school motivation, relationship motivation, and development of a school engagement program.