Latent Transition Analysis in Education

Latent transition analysis (LTA) is a longitudinal extension of latent class analysis that models how individuals move between qualitatively distinct, unobserved categories over time. In education it represents students as belonging to learner profiles or developmental stages — for example, types of motivation, reading-strategy profiles, or mastery stages — and estimates the probabilities of transitioning from one profile to another between time points. It answers not only how many kinds of learners there are, but how learners change type as instruction and development unfold.