What Makes Lessons Interesting? The Role of Situational and Individual Factors in Three School Subjects

Yi Miau Tsai; Mareike Kunter; Oliver Lüdtke; Ulrich Trautwein; Richard M. Ryan

doi:10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.460

What Makes Lessons Interesting? The Role of Situational and Individual Factors in Three School Subjects

Yi Miau Tsai, Mareike Kunter, Oliver Lüdtke, Ulrich Trautwein, Richard M. Ryan

Department of Education

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

272 Scopus citations

Abstract

The present study investigated intraindividual variation in students' interest experience in 3 school subjects and the predictive power of perceived autonomy support and control. Participants were 261 students in 7th grade. After a survey of students' individual interests and other individual characteristics, repeated lesson-specific measures of students' interest experience and perceived autonomy support and control during instruction were obtained over a 3-week period. Hierarchical linear modeling showed 36%-45% of the variance to be located at the within-student level. Moreover, perceived autonomy support and control during lessons, as well as individual interest, predicted students' interest experience in the classroom.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	460-472
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of Educational Psychology
Volume	100
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.460
State	Published - May 2008

Keywords

autonomy support
individual interest
interest experience
repeated measurement design
self-determination theory

Access to Document

10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.460

Cite this

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