The Relationships between Mother’s Psychological Control and Self-Directed Learning Ability in Elementary School Students: Focusing on the Mediating Effects of Self-Determined Motivation

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effects of self-determined motivation between mother’s psychological control and self-directed learning ability in children. The participants were 457 sixth-grade elementary students in the Gyung-gi province. They completed questionnaires that included the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale, K-SPQ-A, Psychological Control Scale. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s product correlation coefficients were obtained using SPSS (version 18.0), and tests of the mediation were performed using SEM with AMOS (version 18.0). The major findings of this study were as follows that significant correlations among maternal psychological control, self-determined motivation and self-directed learning exist. Also a mother’s psychological control was negatively related to a child’s self-directed learning. The relationship between maternal psychological control and a child’s self directed learning was fully mediated by self determined motivation. These results suggested that high maternal psychological control was negatively affected that development of self-determined motivation and self-directed learning