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Searching for Autonomy before the Transition to Higher Education: How do Identity and Self-Determined Academic Motivation Co-Evolve?

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Abstract

Identity and academic motivation are particularly at stake before the major transition to higher education. However, few studies have explored their changes and their longitudinal bidirectional links. To fill this gap, a three-wave study from the end of the 11th grade to the end of the 12th grade was conducted to explore changes in identity processes and academic motivation and to investigate how they might be interconnected over time. 599 adolescents (mean age 17.4; 59% girls) completed questionnaires containing measures about identity processes and three types of academic motivation: autonomous, controlled, and impersonal. Throughout the study span of one year, four identity processes increased: commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth and exploration in depth, while the process of ruminative exploration decreased. Simultaneously, late adolescents encountered an increase in impersonal motivation, more salient for boys. The results also revealed unidirectional links from motivation to identity processes, with no gender or age moderator effects: exploration in breadth and exploration in depth were positively predicted by autonomous motivation, ruminative exploration was positively predicted by autonomous, controlled, and impersonal motivation. In addition, impersonal motivation negatively predicted commitment making. On the other hand, identification with commitment positively predicted autonomous motivation. Practical implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Since the present data included only three waves, only linear changes could be reasonably estimated. Since no comparison of models were run, the presentation of goodness of fit indices was superfluous.

  2. Time constraints on variances and covariances were also tested. Fixing these estimations to be equal across time damaged the model fit, compared to M2 (χ2(154) = 532.1, p < 0.0001, CFI = 0.922, RMSEA = 0.08 [0.07–0.09], SRMR = 0.05, Δ χ2(26) = 224.6, p < 0.0001, Δ CFI = −0.041). This result suggested that correlated relative change and disturbances variance were not stable across waves.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the students, teachers and school administrators who made this study possible. The study was supported by the University of Nantes. They also thank Roger Levesque and the reviewers for their useful comments on previous versions of the document.

Authors’ Contributions

C.K. conceived of the study, coordinated the data collection, and conceived of the manuscript; C.S.M. participated in the drafting and revised the manuscript; L.L.W. critically commented on and revised the manuscript; J-M.G. performed statistical analyses and critically commented the results section of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

The authors received no external funding to conduct the study reported in the present manuscript

Data Sharing Declaration

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BePsyLab, University of Nantes, Nantes, France

    Cécile Kindelberger

  2. Laboratory of Psychology of Socialization, Development and Work, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Claire Safont-Mottay

  3. Laboratory of Psychology, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

    Lyda Lannegrand-Willems

  4. CNRS, Laboratoire de Mathématiques Jean Leray (LMJL- UMR 6629), Nantes, France

    Jean-Michel Galharret

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  1. Cécile Kindelberger
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Correspondence to Cécile Kindelberger.

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Table 4

Table 4 Stability and cross-lagged paths for identity processes and motivation
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Kindelberger, C., Safont-Mottay, C., Lannegrand-Willems, L. et al. Searching for Autonomy before the Transition to Higher Education: How do Identity and Self-Determined Academic Motivation Co-Evolve?. J Youth Adolescence 49, 881–894 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01137-5

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