THE COMPARISON OF SELF-DETERMINATION REGULATORS BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ATTENDING ORDINARY AND TUTORIAL SCHOOLS IN THAILAND

Abstract

Thai senior high school students currently enrolled more in tutorial schools, while they are prone to. Moreover, students have less interest in studying in the ordinary school which is compulsory education. Many researchers have highlighted that there are various kinds of factors that potentially affect high school students’ motivation to study. Therefore, we have made an online survey to explore those. We adopt the self-determination theory (SDT) which explains various types of regulations that motivate students to study more in tutorial schools and ordinary schools. SDT presents types of regulation that lead to those reactions, consisting of amotivation, extrinsic motivation (i.e. external, introjected, identified, and integrated regulations), and intrinsic motivation. The result showed that integrated regulation is the major motivating regulator affecting students to study more in tutorial schools; whereas, external regulation is the major reason for attending ordinary schools. In addition, we found that the level of non-internalised motivation (amotivation and external regulation) in ordinary schools is greater than that in tutorial schools. However, the level of internalised motivation (integrated and intrinsic regulation) in tutorial schools is greater than their counterparts.