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Published on: December 23, 2025
Motivational ecologies in AI-supported classrooms: Teachers and ChatGPT as dual agents
1Department of School Pedagogy, University Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.
Background:
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly integrated into classroom practice, yet their motivational-emotional implications remain insufficiently understood. Situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT) conceptualizes motivation and emotion as embedded in contextual affordances, raising the question of how AI-supported learning environments reorganize motivation.
Aims:
This study examined motivational-emotional learner profiles in rubric-guided self-learning (SL) classrooms with and without ChatGPT access and tested whether perceived teacher motivational support and perceived ChatGPT assistance were associated with profile membership.
Sample(S):
Participants were 1674 German secondary students (Mage = 13.31, SD = 1.01) from non-AI-assisted SL classrooms (n = 709) and AI-assisted SL classrooms (n = 965).
Methods:
Using a cross-sectional, person-oriented design, students reported interest, self-efficacy, effort, and negative emotions. Latent profile analyses were conducted separately by learning condition, followed by multinomial logistic regression.
Results:
Four motivational profiles-Low Motivation, Medium Motivation, High Motivation, and one mixed profile -emerged in both contexts. Compared with non-AI-assisted classrooms, AI-assisted classrooms showed fewer students in Low Motivation (4% vs. 9%) and High Motivation (16% vs. 28%) profiles and a larger share clustered in intermediate configurations. Across contexts, higher perceived teacher support was associated with adaptive profile membership; perceived ChatGPT assistance provided additional differentiation in AI-assisted classrooms.
Conclusions:
ChatGPT access was associated with a redistribution rather than an overall increase in motivation, characterized by attenuated motivational extremes. The findings point to a hybrid motivational ecology in which teacher support remains central, while AI functions as a context-dependent, emotionally stabilizing affordance.
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