Explaining within-semester changes in student effort in junior high school and senior high school courses.

Within any course, as a semester progresses some students reduce their effort and others by harder. Virtually every cognitive theory of motivation suggests that changes in ability perceptions partially determine these changes in effort. Researchers have also cited changes in students' valuing of the course and changes in extrinsic pressures as determinants of effort changes. Covariance structure modeling was used to test 4 alternative models concerning the determinants of effort in a sample of 167 junior high school and 155 senior high school students