Intrinsic Motivation and School Outcomes for Underprivileged Urban High School Students

In a longitudinal study 9th-10th grade, we aimed to understand whether academic motivation was associated with changes in school outcomes with 463 students from low-income urban high schools with large Latinx enrollments. We tracked students' GPA, school attendance, out-of-school suspension records, and intrinsic motivation for two consecutive school years. First, we observed similar means of intrinsic motivation at medium-high levels for these students over the first two years of high school. We depicted a quadratic GPA trajectory that showed small decreases in the 9th grade followed by a modest recovery in Spring of 10th grade. Attendance significantly decreased and out-of-school suspensions increased from 9th to 10th grade. Second, intrinsic motivation in 9th grade was positively associated with GPA in two consecutive semesters-Spring of 9th grade and Fall of 10th grade, which may help students with higher intrinsic motivation offset previous GPA decline by small effect sizes. Third, intrinsic motivation was positively related to better school attendance in 10th grade, but the effect size was small. Our findings, however, indicate that intrinsic motivation's associations with GPA and attendance were not wholly consistent. Finally, intrinsic motivation was negatively related to out-of-school suspension in 9th and 10th grades with moderate effect sizes.