Studying to play, playing to study: Nine college student-athletes’ motivational sense of self

This study represents a grounded theory investigation of how motivation and self-perceptions influence students’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors by focusing on student-athletes, individuals who may experience conflicting sets of motivation and self issues. From observing and interviewing nine student-athletes at a Research 1 university, we developed a process model relating themes to the students’ experiences. In the model, the relationship between motivation and the self within the domains of academics and athletics was described as a motivational sense of self. Each student experienced the process represented in the model in his or her own unique and contextually specific way; however, commonalities among the students’ experiences also were seen and resulted in the description of five types of student experiences. Connections to current research on the self (the dialogic self), identity (multiple identities), and motivation (self-determination theory) are discussed.