Changes in Student Expectancies and Values in Different Lessons

Students can be motivated to learn in some lessons but in other lessons they appear to be unmotivated. If expectancies and values play an important role in the way students approach learning tasks then we would expect their expectancies and values to differ from one lesson to another, but few studies of expectancies and values have investigated lesson-lesson differences. The purpose of this study was to compare expectancies and values when students do feel motivated compared to when they do not feel motivated. The participants were 24 grade 10 students who participated in individual interviews. It was found that more highly positive expectancies and values were associated with lessons in which students experienced a motivated feeling of wanting to learn. Conversely, less positive expectancies and values were associated with lessons in which students had experienced an unmotivated feeling of not wanting to learn. It was concluded that expectancies and values are very closely aligned with these feelings of wanting to learn or not wanting to learn.