Motivational profiles in grade-eight TIMSS science in the Asia-Pacific region: The positive effect of enjoyment and confidence in science

Abstract

Motivation predicts variation in students’ academic performance, but the association is usually at best moderate. One possible explanation is that students with different mixes or profiles of motivational variables change the weak explanatory power of the variables. Motivation profiles may also systematically differ under different cultural contexts, with some research suggesting that highly consistent profiles (as opposed to mixed value profiles) are more evident in Asian jurisdictions. In the current study, a person-centred approach analysed students' motivation profiles in the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) science survey in seven jurisdictions (Australia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore). Latent profile analysis was conducted to create motivational profiles in terms of three motivation variables (i.e., confidence, value, and interest) using tidyLPA in each jurisdiction. Consistent versus mixed profiles were determined by the effect size (Cohen’s d) between the highest and lowest mean of motivation variables within each profile. MANOVA was used to analyse the characteristics of different profiles to examine whether people in each profile are different from each other. Results indicated Asian jurisdictions do not have just consistent profiles. Moreover, profiles with higher enjoyment and confidence towards science were strongly associated with academic performance and socioeconomic home resources. Enjoyment was a consistently better predictor of science achievement across all jurisdictions studied.