Strategically regulating motivation toward success: How motivation regulation profiles relate to achievement, will, and self-regulation of cognitive learning processes.

Students' ability to self-regulate their motivation develops across childhood and adolescence as they acquire strategic knowledge of how to manage their motivation.How do early adolescents selfregulate their motivation, and what kinds of strategy use are most effective for academic achievement?This study examined how sixth-grade students' use of various self-regulation of motivation strategies groups into distinct motivation regulation profiles, and how these profiles relate to their academic achievement, will to learn and perform, and self-regulation of cognitive learning processes strategy use.We surveyed 1,019 Primary 6 (equivalent to U.S. Grade 6) students' reported use of motivation regulation strategies (performance goals, mastery goals, value, situational interest, self-consequating, and environmental structuring) during exam preparation and connected this to their standardized national examination scores at the end of the school year.Latent profile analysis identified four motivation regulation profiles, including goal-driven, high users, moderate users, and low users.Goaldriven students achieved the highest exam scores-perhaps because they optimized strategy selection instead of indiscriminately using many strategies.Goal-driven and high users students reported higher motivation and more positive learning attitudes, but they also experienced higher anxiety.Motivation regulation profiles interacted with students' use of certain learning strategies to predict achievement.Our work illuminates how early adolescents exhibit quantifiable differences in how they self-regulate their motivation in a high-stakes testing context, and how these motivation regulation profiles play an important role in predicting their will to learn and perform and academic achievement. Educational Impact and Implications StatementOur study provides insights into how sixth-grade students self-regulate their motivation by identifying four distinct profiles of motivation regulation strategy use and examining their roles in predicting students' academic achievement.Students who demonstrated more strategic and selective use of motivation regulation strategies (e.g., focusing on learning or performance goals, changing their study environments to facilitate focus, or connecting the learned material to things they value) achieved the highest performance on high-stakes national examinations.Students' motivation regulation profiles also interacted with the ways they self-regulated their cognitive learning processes (including their use of time management and concentration strategies) to predict exam performance.These findings illuminate how primary school students may demonstrate motivation regulation patterns that differ from those typically observed among older students and highlight the importance of the strategic, selective use of motivation regulation strategies.