Feeling exhausted and isolated? The connections between university students’ remote teaching and learning experiences, motivation, and psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

We investigated university students’ remote teaching experiences, how they predict psychological well-being, and whether the predictions vary depending on students’ motivation. Self-reports were collected from Finnish university students (N = 2686). Within the latent variable modeling framework, we classified students according to their expectancy-value-cost profiles, compared latent means, and tested whether the predictions differed across groups. Six groups described the data best: moderately motivated, utility-oriented, disengaged, indifferent, positively ambitious, and struggling ambitious. The groups differed significantly on remote teaching experiences and well-being, but predictions were similar across the groups: Engagement was predicted positively by evaluation of remote teaching and negatively by perceived strain, exhaustion positively by evaluation of teaching and perceived strain, and depressive symptoms by perceived strain and sense of alienation. Findings suggest that remote teaching experiences during the pandemic contribute to students’ psychological well-being in distinct ways, and that certain motivational mindsets might buffer against the negative effects.

Motivational Profiles in Mathematics - Stability and Links with Educational and Emotional Outcomes

“…To summarize, these previous findings inform us that some students may hold multiple salient motivational beliefs simultaneously, and that cost seems particularly important in capturing aspects of motivation and distinguishing different types of students that cannot be fully captured by solely positive EVT components (see Juntunen et al, 2022;Perez et al, 2019;Raufelder et al, 2022;Watt et al, 2019). As most previous studies have focused only on a single or one combined aspect of cost (Conley, 2012;Gaspard et al, 2018Gaspard et al, , 2019, it seems important to further examine the multidimensionality of cost while investigating students' motivational profiles.…”

“…Watt et al (2019) studied slightly younger students and identified three motivational profiles in the domains of math and science (separately) among secondary students (Grade 10). In both domains, they found a group with overall positive motivation, a group with overall negative motivation yet elevated utility value, and also, similarly to Juntunen et al (2022), Perez et al (2019), and Lee et al (2022), a group showing elevated levels of both positive and negative motivational beliefs. A similar group of lower-secondary students with high self-concept and task value, yet elevated levels of cost in both mathematics and literacy was identified by Raufelder et al (2022).…”

“…Furthermore, considering the ongoing negative trends in students' psychological wellbeing and school adjustment (Kauhanen et al, 2022), it seems relevant to investigate the link between motivational constructs and students' well-being as well. Overall, studies have found competence-and value-beliefs to be negatively correlated with depression (Juntunen et al, 2022;Watt et al, 2019) and school burnout (Korhonen et al, 2014;Widlund et al, 2020), whereas cost-perceptions have been found to be positively related to depression, stress, anxiety, and study-related exhaustion (Juntunen et al, 2022;Watt et al, 2019). Furthermore, Juntunen et al (2022) found that students belonging to the most positive motivational profile (Positively ambitious) also had the most positive well-being.…”

“…Most previous research has focused only on one task value dimension (e.g., intrinsic value or interest; Lazarides et al, 2021), or combined several aspects to represent students' overall value beliefs (Lazarides, Viljaranta, et al, 2016). Cost has been the least studied dimension, but has recently started to receive increased attention, and is suggested to be particularly important for identifying students with maladaptive patterns of motivational beliefs and goals (Juntunen et al, 2022). Considering general negative trends in students' well-being (e.g., school burnout: Widlund et al, 2021) and motivation (competence and value beliefs: Jacobs et al, 2002) during adolescence, it seems important to include students' perceived costs to better understand how experienced strain might be related to their performance, educational aspirations, and well-being.…”

“…Also, the group experiencing the highest levels of costs in general (particularly opportunity and psychological cost), still had rather moderate value beliefs. Also among Finnish university students, Juntunen et al (2022) extracted six expectancy-value-cost profiles: overall positive (positively ambitious), moderate (moderately motivated), and negative (disengaged) motivational profiles but, also, a profile high on both values and costs (struggling ambitious), a profile low on intrinsic value but high on utility value and costs (utility-oriented), and a profile with moderate values and rather low costs (indifferent).…”