This cross-national study investigates the perception of the impact of
students’ relationships towards teachers and peers on scholastic motivation in
a total sample of 1477 seventh and eighth grade German (N = 1088) and Canadian
(N = 389) secondary school students. By applying Multigroup Confirmatory
Latent Class Analysis in Mplus we confirmed four different motivation types:
(1) teacher-dependent; (2) peer-dependent; (3) teacher-and-peer-dependent; (4)
teacher-and-peer-independent motivation types in Québec, Canada, as they were
found in a preliminary study among German students in the state of Brandenburg
(Raufelder, Jagenow, Drury, & Hoferichter, 2013). However, across the two
samples, the class sizes varied considerable. The largest group among Canadian
students was composed of teacher-and-peer-dependent students, followed by
teacher-and-peer-independent students, while the largest group among German
students was composed of peer-dependent students, followed by teacher-and-
peer-independent students. In both settings the teacher-dependent motivation
type constituted the smallest group. These results manifest the different
impacts of social environmental variables on the motivation of German and
Canadian students, having practical implications for school psychologists and
educators in general