Peer climate matters for academic motivation and student functioning in Higher Education

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Adie, James W., Waldeck, D., Hughes, D. J., Mulvenna, M., Holliman, A. J., Bartholomew, K. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0171-7922 and Higton, C. (2024) Peer climate matters for academic motivation and student functioning in Higher Education. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 9 (3). 1685–1702. ISSN 2364-5040

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Abstract

The current study tested a mediational model accounting for the hypothesized sequence of relationships between the perceived peer-created learning climate, academic motivation, and indices of student functioning across two cohorts in a Higher Education setting. Utilizing a total of 373 undergraduate psychology students from two independent samples (cohort 1: n = 172; cohort 2: n = 201), our findings revealed that a perceived peer-autonomy supportive climate significantly and positively related to both types of academic motivation, albeit more strongly for autonomous relative to controlled regulation, and was inversely associated with amotivation. In turn, higher levels of autonomous motivation were strongly related with higher levels of engagement, and lower levels of burnout symptoms among the participants, whereas the inverse was observed for controlled and amotivation. Indirect effects were also found concerning the mediational role of academic motivation, and our findings were replicated across samples ruling out the possibility of a potential cohort effect. Overall, our findings point towards the theoretical and practical significance of peer influence for fostering academic motivation and healthy functioning among students in Higher Education. However, they also highlight the potential of peers to create climates which may, on the face of it, appear autonomy-supportive, but promote more introjected and external reasons for student motivation which, in turn, undermines their psychological functioning. Future research unpacking the complex influence of peer climates on student motivation in Higher Education is needed.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Data Availability Statement: Due to ethical restrictions, the data generated by the survey research and analyzed during the current study is kept under password protection on the Open Science Framework, (OSF; https://osf.io/thjsz). Interested researchers wanting to access the data must do so as a reasonable request to the corresponding author (J.Adie@staff.newman.ac.uk) in order to retrieve the password. Funding information: The study was not supported by funding.
Uncontrolled Keywords: higher education,peer autonomy support,self-determination,student functioning,student motivation,well-being,applied psychology,social sciences (miscellaneous) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3202
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Sport, Health And Education
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 03 Dec 2024 01:35
Last Modified: 13 Dec 2024 01:38
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97850
DOI: 10.1007/s41042-024-00187-w

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