Investigation On Learning Motivation Of Junior High School Students In Zhun Ge’er

Motivation is the driving force for people to accomplishing a task orcarrying out an activity. It stimulates people and maintains people’s efforts tofulfill tasks.(Similarly) learning motivation is the power and internal statethat stimulate (students) and keep in continuance their efforts towardslearning. It, in addition, regulates students behaviour towards learningobjectives. Existent studies illustrate that strong motivation towards learningguarantees excellent performance while weak motivation means less interestof students towards learning, their tendency of coping with their parents and(consequently) poor performance. Poor performance in turn impairs learningmotivation. A vicious cycle is thus formed. This may further affect studentspsychology development. As the above demonstrates, learning motivation hasbeen a popular topic for researchers. With today’s fast social andtechnological development, employment in all industries are stronglycompetitive and challenging. Talented people who are both knowledgeableand capable of doing research are what required of in the society. Therefore,students must learn actively in order to gain necessary scientific knowledgeand techniques and to meet the needs of the society. Yet, learning motivationis the prerequisite for students to learn. They two are closely connected. Lackof learning motivation affects learning performance and cognitivedevelopment. For the formation of positive learning habit, the stage of juniorhigh school is a crucial stage. Therefore, how to promote learning motivationand finish junior high school thus laying a good foundation for the next stepbecomes a key issue for research in education.The writer of this paper is a junior high school teacher, and he found inteaching that a lot of students are of low interest, having inactive attituderather than that with sense of responsibility towards learning. According topreliminary analysis of the writer, one of the reasons could be that people/parents in this region are still of low educational level though they areeconomically better off which is due to land acquisition and house levy.Before the90s, this region was backward and people were mostly farmerswho lived at the mercy of the elements and they were mostly illiterate orsemi-illiterate. Today, they are better off economically, but there is still a gapbetween them and those people/parents who are better educated. Anotherreason is the spread of the idea of study being useless among parents andstudents which can be attributed to heavy pressure of employment ofuniversity graduates. Furthermore, the local government strengthens theirefforts in employment guidance to children from farmer families which nolonger own land. For those children, their employment channel is broadened.And children of employers of local enterprises can be hired soon if they gothrough vocational schools. As technical workers are particularly needed inrecent years, the majority of poor performance students, those whopredictably not able to pass exams for further study, chose this path, i.e goingto technical schools etc. which leads to easier employment than full-timeuniversity graduates.For investigating the overall learning motivation of the local junior highschool students, this study applied MAAT as by Mr. Zhou Bucheng, aprofessor in Psychology Faculty of East China Normal University. Theresearch subjects are students in junior high school in Zhun Ge’er. Thefollowings are the conclusions.1.Generally speaking, learning motivation of junior high school students inZhun Ge’er is of medium level which belongs to the “normal” state. Amongthe dimensions,“knowledge, learning achievement motivation and social lifescenes motivation” as well as “demand level” dimensions scored high. Thismeans that the majority of the students are of relatively strong achievementmotivation. they are full of confidence about finishing their study tasks withhigh standard.2. There is no significant difference in learning motivation between genders,but there is obvious dissimilarity in social life scene and test anxiety and failure avoidance between genders. Girl students are significantly higher thanboy students. This means that girls are more in need of winning recognitionfrom teachers and peer students, and girls are more afraid of test failures thanboys.3. The influence of school types to junior high school students in Zhun Ge’eris mainly about “knowledge learning achievement motivation” and “demandlevel”. Students in the9thmiddle school, which is a key school, are ofsignificantly higher level of motivation than those in the10thmiddle school,which is an ordinary school.4. There is also significant difference in “knowledge learning achievementmotivation” between the only-child students and the non-only-child students.5. Notable difference also exists in “demand level” between students living incities and towns and those in countryside.6.”Knowledge learning achievement motivation” decreases from grade one tograde three students.7. Among junior high school students in Zhun Ge’er, those with betterperformance are of stronger motivation in all factors (except test failureanxiety avoidance) and are of weaker test failure anxiety avoidance level.8. Parenting style as well leads to remarkable difference in learningmotivation among junior high school students in Zhun Ge’er. With parentingstyles from democratic, authorative to laissez-faire manner, students’ learningmotivation decreases.9. The two learning motivation factors, test anxiety tension and demand leveldiffers among students whose parents are of different educational level. Thebetter educated the parents, the higher level of motivation in test anxietytension And demand level the children/students.