Intrinsic motivation and perceived utility as predictors of student homework engagement // Motivación intrínseca y utilidad percibida como predictores del compromiso del estudiante con los deberes escolares

Abstract

The value assigned to, including the utility value, is behind the students’ choices and their degree of engagement, effort and persistence with learning activities and, finally, explains academic achievement. The present study attempts to verify to what extent the value and the perception of utility attributed to homework could be a relevant predictor of the student's behavioral engagement. With a sample of 730 Secondary Education students and through the path analysis, the results obtained, in general terms, confirm the general hypothesis based on which the model was constructed. Thus, intrinsic motivation and the perceived usefulness of homework are significantly and positively associated with the student's engagement to them and this engagement is also positively related to academic achievement. It is found that the amount of variance that is explained of the academic achievement by the five variables related to homework is only 8.6%. The main contribution of the study is that when the student is interested in working on homework and trusts that they are useful for this purpose, their involvement with homework will be higher. The purpose of learning and the perception of utility become explanatory factors of the quality of the student's engagement to homework.