Abstracts - Earli

in the Hong Kong context, the more ways a student can be motivated the more likely they will beusing better learning strategies and to have more positive self perceptions.Understanding personal and contextual factors generating adaptive academic motivation incollege: An interview studyBodil Stokke Olaussen, University of Oslo, NorwayWhile there often seems to be a general decline in adaptive motivation over the college years,some students display growth trajectories that, in fact, counter this negative trend. The currentresearch provides an in-depth examination of personal and contextual factors that may generatepositive motivational development for individual students. The participants were 22 Norwegianbusiness administration students who had previously participated in longitudinal cluster-analyticresearch, indicating that these students had either maintained or developed high levels of adaptiveacademic motivation (in terms of personal interest, mastery goals, task value, and self-efficacy)over a period of two academic years. In this study, we followed-up on the longitudinal clusteranalyticresearch by using interviewing methodology to have the participants themselves describeand explain their motivational development during the same period of time. The findings indicatedthat these students had clear overall goals for their education, combining a wish to learn withambitions to receive good grades and be able to compete for the best jobs. Moreover, thesestudents reportedly regulated not only their academic motivation, but also their cognition,behaviour, and study context, with this being in line with several recent theoretical accounts ofself-regulated learning. This effort to understand personal and contextual factors that generatepositive motivational growth trajectories for individuals may have important implications forinstructional design, helping us create motivationally optimal learning environments for morestudents in postsecondary education.Are changes in students’ perceptions of the learning environment related to changes in emotionaland behavioural problems?Elin Thuen, Univeristy of Stavanger, NorwayEdvin Bru, University of Stavanger, NorwayPrevious survey based research suggests that students’ perceptions of the learning environment areassociated with emotional and behavioural problems (EBP). However, it is not clear to what extentthe associations identified are merely reflections of individual student characteristics. The presentstudy explored this issue by utilizing a one group pretest-posttest design to minimize the influenceof individual characteristics on associations of perceived learning environment with EBP.Moreover, by connecting the study to a planned restructuring of the learning environmentoccurring in a Norwegian secondary school, it was also explored how changes in the learningenvironment were related to changes in EBP. Results suggest that associations between learningenvironment factors and EBP are not merely reflections of individual characteristics. Change inoff-task-orientation was significantly associated with changes in all learning environment factors,strongest with meaningfulness of schoolwork, teachers’ emotional support and adaptation ofschoolwork. Changes in teachers’ monitoring, emotional and academic support were the strongestpredictors of change in externalising problems. These factors were also significantly associatedwith change in emotional problems, together with changes in student influence andmeaningfulness of schoolwork. We also explored if individual coping styles would predictchanges in emotional and behavioural problems following the restructuring of the learningenvironment. Results did not support this.– 82 –