Academic motivation, social interaction and learning environment: a correlational study of Turkish high school students

The cognitive, psychological and behavioral processes and traits of students in learning have been fundamental aspects of academic motivation research. Consequently, educational study tended to focus on academic motivation in an individualistic perspective and acknowledged motivation as an individualistic phenomenon. However, predominantly in the present decade, there has been a change towards the social and cultural contexts. Although researchers have begun approaching academic motivation in socio-cultural and physical surroundings of students, there is still an unclear understanding of the phenomenon in these settings. Furthermore, there is a remaining knowledge gap of academic motivation, as well as inadequate investigations of relationship between academic motivation and students’ environmental interaction, in the research contexts of certain countries such as, Turkey. Therefore, this thesis aims to grasp academic motivation of Turkish high school students in consideration of their school, teachers, peers and family perceptions, as well as their feelings on presented domains. The present study also seeks to approach the phenomena by investigating the correlational relationships of academic motivation with the social and physical surroundings of students. This study was conducted in two vocational high schools in Turkey with the participation of 67 high school students from 10th and 11th grades of both schools. The instrument used in this study was a quantitative survey designed in five themes: academic intrinsic motivation, school and learning environment, teacher, peer and family perceptions of students. The survey included 31 statements with qualitative nature; in order to ensure quantitative measuring, the statements were presented with answer options in Likert scale. The results indicated that students perceived their academic motivation positively, although the presence of neutrality in the answers were also prominent. It was concluded that the academic intrinsic motivation levels of students were shifting between moderate and high; in average, a moderate-high level of academic intrinsic motivation was observed. Academic motivation was later analyzed by correlating the average results of the remaining domains of the study. Positive correlations were found between academic intrinsic motivation; in order of school concept, teachers and parents. The correlations indicated that as students had higher perceptions of school, teachers and parents, academic intrinsic motivation tended to increase. However, there was a negative correlation between academic motivation and peer perceptions. Correspondingly, higher peer perceptions emerged as less academic motivation in students. Although this study does not claim having a causal research nature, it emphasizes there are relationships between academic motivation and social and physical surroundings of students in Turkish contexts. Therefore, the present study suggests future investigations for in-depth understanding of the relationships in correlational or causal sense