Academic Motivation Of Middle And High School Students

Motivation is the energizing and directing of behavior, the force behind our yearning for food, our longing for sexual intimacy, our desire to achieve, our need to belong. It is considered to be the internal energy of behavior. As an important branch of motivation study, the study of academic motivation is developing widely in education and psychology fields. Academic motivation is the tendency to find school-related activation meaningful and worthwhile and therefore to attempt to get the maximum benefit from them. It is the key factor of restricting academic behaviors and academic quality, and which forming and developing is influenced by a great deal of factors. Understanding the relationship between emotion, self-knowing and self-evaluation, social-culture factors and academic motivation may be central to developing more effective teaching strategies.Academic motivation is a key determinant of academic performance and deserves closer attention. The current research was designed to examine how emotion, self-knowing and self-evaluation, social-culture factors may relate to individual differences in middle and high school students' academic motivation. Seven hundred and fifty middle and high school students from the city, the county and the country completed a questionnaire, and twelve of them were interviewed, measuring: (a) the characteristics and developing directions of their academic motivation. (b) the characteristics and developing directions of their emotion, self-knowing and self-evaluation, and social-culture factors and the influence on academic motivation. At last the simple regression model was found.The results indicated that:First, in the aspect of sex, (a) achievement motivation in academic motivation variable differs significantly, that is, achievement motivation of girls is higher than that of boys. (b) Apprehension in emotion variable differs significantly, that is, apprehension of boys is higher than that of girls. (c) parental rearing pattern in social-culture factors variable differs significantly, that is, the evaluation of girls is higher than that of boys.Second, there is significant interaction between sex and family places in aspects of academic motivation, emotion, self-knowing and self-evaluation, and social-culture factors.Third, in the aspect of family places, academic motivation variable of middle school students does not differ significantly; however, achievement motivation in academic motivation variable of high school students differs significantly.Fourth, our regression analyses further clarify the nature of the relationships between emotion, self-knowing and self-evaluation, social-culture factors and academic motivation.Results are discussed in relation to the relevant literature.