Coherence among university courses, learning motivation, and personal and social identity

Research on teacher education shows that the subjective perception of coherent opportunities to learn is important for student professional development and well-being. Coherence is defined as the extent to which different opportunities to learn and learning contents are coordinated, linked, and aligned. While coherence has been studied within interdisciplinary degree programmes such as teacher education, there is a lack of knowledge on the perception of coherence within degree programmes that focus on one discipline, i.e., are disciplinary homogeneous. The present study examines (1) group differences in coherence perceptions of students in different degree programmes. Moreover, the study examines to what extent higher perceived coherence is associated with (2) higher learning motivation and (3) higher identification in terms of personal and social identity. Finally, we examine to what extent higher learning motivation is associated with higher identification. We collect cross-sectional data of N ~280 first semester students enrolled in teacher education, medicine, law, psychology, economics, biology, and nutritional sciences (n ~ 40 students per degree programme). In online questionnaires, students reported on perceived coherence, social identification and identity commitment with their field of study, and their learning motivation (positive and negative task values, self-concept). Hypothesis (1) will be tested using mean comparisons. Hypotheses (2)-(4) will be tested using multivariate regression.