Classroom Motivational Climate in Middle School: A Descriptive Exploration of Students’ Experienced and Desired Instructional Practices

Ensuring that students are motivated in and beyond middle school is an important educational objective. Based on achievement goal theory, research has demonstrated that the classroom motivational climate can influence students’ motivation and achievement. Instructional practices that foster mastery goal structures have been proposed within the TARGET framework. However, relatively few studies have explored students’ views of these, and thus, the aim of the current study was to explore which instructional practices students perceive as conducive to the classroom motivational climate. In the current qualitative study, 13 students (Grades 6 to 9) in Germany were asked about their past experiences and expressed their desires in semi-structured interviews. A deductive content analysis was utilized to identify instructional practices under the TARGET dimensions. The results provide insights into students’ preferred instructional practices, which are compared with those previously suggested for fostering mastery goal structures in the Discussion. Preliminary implications for practice and future research are suggested.