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Military academies request initiatives for better pedagogy to keep their cadets motivated and successful. Following the self-determination theory, one could promote autonomous motivation by fulfilling the three basic psychological needs of students: the need for autonomy, relatedness and competence. In this qualitative research, we investigated which motivational critical events go together with a perception of high or low autonomy, relatedness and competence. To this end, we organized four focus groups with participants from the two faculties of the Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA): Social and Military Sciences (SMS) and Engineering (ENG). Using the critical incident method, we searched for the facilitating and inhibiting events with regard to motivation within the learning environment. Thereafter, we used the constant comparison method as an analysis technique to link the critical events to one of the three basic needs. We found that a perception of high relatedness was the most effective in motivating SMS cadets, while the perception of high competence was the most effective in motivating ENG cadets. For both the SMS and ENG cadets, a lack of autonomy was demotivating. This study provides a model that suggests in which way context characteristics within a (military) learning environment meets students' basic psychological needs and how it is facilitating or inhibiting motivation in turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]