School Motivation among Elementary and High School Students: The Foundation for Students’ Academic Success
Abstract: School motivation is recognized as the foundation for students’ academic success. Motivation has been defined from the stance of various approaches over the past decades such as self-efficacy, attribution, locus of control, and goals. However, few of these approaches have shed light on how students integrate school related work into their own set of values and how this integration facilitates learning and achievement. Indeed, one of the most important challenges that educators face is to help students to value some educational tasks that are not always interesting. A useful theoretical framework for understanding “students’ identification with school values” is Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Specifically, this theory considers not only intrinsic interests but also other motivational dimensions that evaluate the degree to which students personally endorse or not certain educational tasks. In my lecture, I will thus address four questions in light of this theoretical framework: 1) What is school motivation? 2) What are the consequences of school motivation for students’ learning and achievement? 3) What are the teaching practices that sustain or foster students’ motivation? 4) How information technology could be used to promote students’ motivation? Answers to these questions will be based on recent empirical studies conducted in the filed of motivation.