Introduction to Motivational Profiles in TIMSS Mathematics

The role of motivation in educational achievement has been the focus of considerable research interest. While most empirical studies of the relationship between motivation and achievement use a variable-centered approach, this investigation takes a person-centered approach to identify student motivational profiles and examine their association with students’ mathematics performance in International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and with other sociodemographic variables over time and across countries. The research aims to describe profiles with consistent or mixed scores on TIMSS motivation variables, and establish the relationship between profiles with mathematics achievement and with other sociodemographic variables. The motivation profiles and their characteristics are examined for students in grades four and eight, across 12 participating jurisdictions and over three administrations from 1995 to 2015.