Motivation and Engagement From SDT Perspective

Motivation contributes constructively to students' learning and positive functioning, and it often does so by enhancing students' engagement during learning activities. Hence, the study of student engagement is a complementary area of investigation to the study of student motivation. More specifically, we investigate how engagement mediates and explains the motivation-to-achievement relation. We further study the engagement-fostering motivational resources students bring with them into the classroom (e.g., interest, goals, autonomy) and how teachers' motivating styles and classroom learning environments sometimes support and strengthen-but other times neglect and frustrate-students' inner motivational resources and natural propensity to engage themselves in classroom endeavors.