Worrying or motivating? Students’ experiences of their parents’ motivational messages

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Remedios, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7717-6421, Davis-Yates, B. ORCID: 0000-0002-1374-6683, Cunliffe, M. ORCID: 0000-0002-1157-2878 and Justice, L. ORCID: 0000-0003-3394-2283, 2022. Worrying or motivating? Students’ experiences of their parents’ motivational messages. In: Psychology of Education Section Annual Conference 2022, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, 14-15 September 2022.

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Abstract

Objectives: During periods of high-stakes exams, evidence suggests there are considerable differences in the way students respond to their teachers’ motivational messages (Putwain, Symes, Nicholson & Remedios, 2020). During this period, students also receive motivation from their caregivers, typically their parents. Less clear whether there are differences in how students experience these messages from their parents. A newly developed instrument for examining Parental Motivational Messages (PMM, Remedios & Putwain, in prep.), identified four constructs most relevant to the message students received from their parents. These are Pride i.e., the degree to which students want to make their parents proud, Reassurance i.e., the degree to which students receive reassurance from their parents, Behaviour i.e., the degree to which students change their behaviour when pressured to do well and Consequence i.e., the degree to which students are reminded of the consequence of not doing well in their exams. change their behaviour when pressured to do well reassurance from their parents, This study examined the relationships between PMM constructs, mastery, anxiety, self-efficacy, gender, and socio-economic status. Method: A cross-sectional quantitative survey study with 1507 students studying for their A-levels in England (Mage = 17.07 years (SDage = .73), 874 female, 228 male, 39 self-identified, 16 prefer not to say) was conducted using an on-line questionnaire. Results: Several analyses were conducted. First, a multilevel linear model was run to understand if there were differences in scale scores by gender. Results revealed that compared to males, females had reliably higher scores on PM behaviour, PM pride, PM reassurance and test anxiety. Secondly, a multiple regression examined whether self-efficacy, mastery and anxiety predicted PM subscales, (controlling for gender). Findings revealed that for Consequence, Test anxiety was a reliable positive predictor of Consequence, for Reassurance, Mastery was a reliable positive predictor of Reassurance., for Behaviour, Self-efficacy and Mastery were reliable negative predictors whilst test anxiety was a reliable positive predictor. For Pride, Mastery and test anxiety were reliable positive predictors of Pride. Thirdly, path modelling was used to understand the relationship between self-efficacy, mastery and reassurance. The model showed good fit to the data with reliable positive relationships between both self-efficacy and mastery and mastery and reassurance. Conclusions: The research suggests that the same motivational messages can be received very differently by different types of students. Recommendations for how messages should be given and suggestions for additional research will be discussed.

Item Type:

Conference contribution

Creators:

Remedios, R., Davis-Yates, B., Cunliffe, M. and Justice, L.

Date:

14 September 2022

Identifiers: