Motivation of high-ability secondary school students from low SES families: the Netherlands, compared to Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Germany

The current study aimed to gain insights into the relation between high-ability, low socioeconomic status (SES) and motivation in secondary school students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Luxembourg. The hypothesis was that low SES, high-ability students had a stronger probability to be in the group of 10% least motivated students, considering that they seem to be at risk of not being recognised for potential high abilities. Using the PISA data of two cohorts, N = 34,000 (2015) and N = 31,578 (2018), high-ability was operationalised by high-performance on one or more subjects. In general, students from the Netherlands were significantly less motivated for science and reading than students from the other countries. Relations between performance and motivation, and between SES and motivation, were similar in all five countries. A logistic regression showed that, after controlling for gender, there was an effect of SES in Belgium, Denmark and Germany, indicating that coming from a low SES family increased the chances of being low in motivation. An effect of performance showed that in all countries in both cohorts high-performance made it significantly less probable to be in the group of least motivated students. An interaction effect was found between SES and performance in Germany in 2018, indicating a moderating influence of SES on the relation between performance and motivation in average/high SES students, but not in low SES students. Future research is recommended on high-ability in addition to performance, qualitative research in addition to quantitative results.