Academic motivation can be defined as a form of cognitive and emotional arousal that influence a learner’s academic achievement (Vallerand et al.,
1992). According to Hakan and Münire (
2014), academic motivation is an internal state that activates, directs and maintains learning-related behaviors. Two main types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, lie as groundwork underpropping a large number of theories of motivation such as expectancy-value theory (Wigfield, Tonks, & Klauda,
2009; Wigfield & Eccles,
2000), goal orientation models (Anderman, Austin, & Johnson,
2002), attribution theory (Kelley & Michela,
1980; Weiner,
2008), as well as self-determination theory (Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan,
1991), self-efficacy theory (Zimmerman,
2000). These theories provide researchers and instructors great understanding of academic motivation in teaching and learning setting, and valuable information regarding how students adjust to various learning environments. First, a learner’s academic motivation is the result of interactions between classroom factors and the student’s particular characteristics (Wigfield & Eccles,
2000). Thus, classroom goal structures, teacher reactions to student performance, and individual differences should be carefully designed or examined in the educational setting (Gredler,
2001). Second, the student is an active processor and interpreter of the classroom setting, so student’s academic motivation can be enhanced by engaging students in meaningful learning activities (Gredler,
2001). Third, students can reflect on and report their perceptions of academic motivation to others (Murphy & Alexander,
2000), making it possible to collect students’ motives and needs in forms of surveys.
The question regarding to whether academic motivation predicts student learning achievement is important in educational practices. Although students’ academic motivation can change with environmental and interpersonal factors, researchers had made consensus that educators, parents and school administrators should create conditions for students to stimulate their motivation, which would have the potential to improve their learning performance in consequence (Guay, Ratelle, Roy & Litalien,
2010). However, on one hand, there is no liner correlation between students’ academic motivation and their learning performance, owing to the complexity of learning process (Fortier, Vallerand, & Guay,
1995). On the other hand, it’s important to notice that students’ academic motivation vary in terms of gender, domain and grade (Hakan & Münire,
2014). And one shared assumption of motivation models is that motivation is subject-specific, which means students’ academic motivation may differ for English, math, science and other courses (Gredler,
2001).
A broad range of research had demonstrated the positive influence of the eSchoolbag on students’ motivations, which always lead to improvement in learning outcomes (Chabert et al.,
2006; Wang & Towey,
2012; Xie et al.,
2015). The rationales partly lie in the highly interactive environments provided by the eSchoolbag which satisfy the characteristics of students in current schools, also known as ‘digital natives’ who consider technology as their basic lifestyle (Gu et al.,
2013). Another reason as revealed by Gu and Zhang (
2014), parents and students have much expectations in classroom innovations and the eSchoolbag programs with the rising of ‘One-to-One computing’ around the world. Thus, when taking eSchoolbag into classroom practice, students tend to have high motivation to use it. However, on one hand, few research has focused on how students’ perceptions towards the eSchoolbag affect their learning achievements. Each student comes to the classroom with their own personalities, expectation and values, it’s crucial to examine how students’ motivations and its internal elements (e.g. attainment value, intrinsic value, utility value and cognitive cost) interplay with their learning performance when using eSchoolbag to assist classroom teaching and learning. On the other hand, with regard to the variation of students’ learning outcomes in the eSchoolbag-based environments, a longitudinal analysis rather than a short-term study has the potential in making conclusions more convincing, considering the fact that the change of learning performance needs a lasting progress. Thus, this study was designed to examine the effect of students’ academic motivations on their English learning achievement in the eSchoolbag-based learning environment through a longitudinal observation and analysis. The mechanism of how students’ motivational elements interplay with their learning outcomes was also carefully examined. Concretely, two research questions were formulated.
1.
What effect did the eSchoolbag-based learning environment have on students’ English learning achievement?
2.
Did students’ academic motivation have a significant effect on their learning achievement when using eSchoolbag to learn English? If true, what’s the rationale behind it?