Students' school performance, task-focus, and situation-specific motivation

• We investigated situation-specific (intrapersonal) experiences of autonomous and controlled motivation.
• Students completed electronic questionnaires during one week of school.
• Autonomous and controlled motivation were positively related, but the association varied between students.
• Lower performers felt more autonomously motivated when controlled motivation was high.

Going beyond studies of individual differences in and profiles of students' motivation, we investigated situation-specific (intra-personal) experiences of autonomous (enjoyment, interest, and task choice) and controlled (having to do, and the teacher wanting them to do a task) motivation across learning situations during one week, and how these were related to student characteristics (teacher rated academic performance and task-focus). Three-hundred and fourteen primary school students (Years 5 and 6) completed electronic questionnaires on Personal Digital Assistants, on an average of 11.2 learning episodes during a week. Multilevel Structural Equation Models provided support for a model based in organismic integration theory (OIT). At the situation-level, controlled motivation positively predicted autonomous motivation. At the student-level, students differed in the association between autonomous and controlled motivations, such that lower performers felt more autonomously motivated when controlled motivation was high. Implications for teacher practice are discussed.