Efforts to improve children's academic outcomes have focused on both achievement motivation and self-regulation skills as they foster children’s interest, confidence, persistence, attention, memory, self-control, and learning (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Blair & Razza, 2007). Recent research has shown that self-regulation and motivation overlap and both predict academic achievement (Berhenke, Lan, & Morrison, 2009). The present studies focus on how motivation and self-regulation are related, how they predict learning in preschool, and teachers’ attributions about students’ behavior when children are struggling academically. When children fail to complete learning activities it can be hard to determine the relative influence of motivation and self-regulation, because children can be uninterested, frustrated, distracted, or have simply forgotten or lack the necessary skills. Helping teachers understand the dynamic interplay between motivation and self-regulatory skills would be especially important for teachers’ ability to aid struggling preschool students. Accordingly, the present study addressed the following questions:
• What is the relation between self-regulation and motivation in preschool children?
• When children fail to persist at challenging tasks, can we tell whether they lack motivation or self-regulation?
• Which components of self-regulation and motivation best predict student learning in preschool?
• How do teachers identify student struggles with self-regulation and motivation?
• How do they differentiate between these concepts?
• How do teachers choose courses of intervention for issues identified as motivational problems versus self-regulatory problems?
One hundred forty children ages 3-5 were assessed using teacher reports, group tasks, and individual assessments of motivation, self-regulation, and achievement. Results revealed that motivation and self-regulation are distinct, related constructs. Persistence is likely the product of motivational beliefs and self-regulatory skills. Motivation predicted growth in children’s reading skills during preschool, whereas both motivation and self-regulation predicted growth in math skills. Teacher reports of children’s motivation and self-regulation did not predict academic growth. Finally, teachers reported using atheoretical, largely intrinsic conceptions of children’s motivation and ideas about self-regulation that included both cognitive skills and emotion regulation. Teaching practices used to promote motivation and self-regulation were aligned with teachers’ conceptions of motivation and self-regulation. Implications for future work are discussed.PHDEducation and PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97992/1/berhenke_1.pd
