Motivated learning: Studying student * situation transactional units

Any theory of motivated learning should describe how students motivational beliefs interact with the cues present in diverse social, physical and instructional contexts. My Model of Adaptable Learning deals explicitly with these student * situation transactional units. The on-line motivation questionnaire which was constructed on the basis of this model records the unique ways in which students give meaning to every-day learning opportunities (appraisals). Seegers &; Boekaerts (1993) hypothesized that there are two main pathways that connect motivational beliefs about mathematics to learning intention, emotional state and task performance. These include an outcome-directed and a value-directed pathway. Based on these data, I hypothesized that the two pathways would also be evident in the data collected from older students under two conditions: seatwork in class and homework assignments. The results from two studies warrant the conclusion that the cognitions and feelings that surface when students are invited to observe the unique properties of concrete mathematics learning tasks do not change randomly. Some stable student * situation transactional units could be discerned. Furthermore, the data suggest that there may be age differences in the paths that lead from domain-specific motivational beliefs to learning intention and well-being.