Longitudinal Relationships Between Academic Self-Control and Achievement Motivation During Different Adolescence Stages.

Self-control has emerged as a research focus, particularly among adolescents, as they frequently struggle with self-control when studying. We examined the longitudinal relationship between achievement motivation (i.e., attainment value and mastery-approach goal) and self-control at the within-person level after controlling for trait-like interpersonal variance. We used 3-year longitudinal data sets from two panels of the 2010 Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey for the multigroup random intercept cross-lagged panel model. The final analysis included self-reported responses to academic self-control, attainment value, and mastery-approach goal for 3 years from 2,152 early adolescents (11–13 years old) and 2,163 middle adolescents (14–16 years old). Our multigroup random intercept cross-lagged panel models with two different adolescent cohorts revealed strong associations between achievement motivation and self-control at the between-person level, regardless of the adolescent cohort. At the within-person level, early and middle adolescents exhibited distinct longitudinal associations between these two variables. Early adolescents' self-control demonstrated noticeable stability and correlations with mastery-approach goal pursuit. By contrast, middle adolescents' self-control exhibited a fluctuating state, which was predicted by attainment value. Practically, this implies that for early adolescents, self-control may function as a trait that can determine and guide adaptive mastery-approach goal pursuit implicitly and habitually. For middle adolescents, however, self-control may no longer function as a trait; instead, it can fluctuate and be affected by their identity-related attainment value perceived within a given academic context. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: Early adolescents (aged 11–13 years) tend to be directed by stable self-control, which is strongly correlated with their goal pursuit to master and develop academic skills. Thus, cultivating in them habitual self-control (e.g., implementation intention) and encouraging its regular practice can enhance both their self-control and adaptive goal pursuit. Conversely, middle adolescents (aged 14–16 years) tend to be guided by attainment values related to their identity formation, which in turn leads to improvements in self-control. Therefore, providing them opportunities to find personal meaning (e.g., career endeavors) in their academic tasks can facilitate effortful and deliberate self-control behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]