Student's motivation in a home economics class of elementary school

In my diploma work I focus on students' motivation in Home Economics lessons. I am interested in how motivated students are in this school subject, and whether there are gender differences , as well as what are the differences in the level of students' motivationmand the final grade they expect. In my theoretical part I concentrate on self-determined theory which represents the ways of optimal autonomous students functioning. The theory explains that students have to fulfil three basic psychological needs: competence, interaction with others and autonomy. These needs are fulfilled only with the interaction of a teacher, student and learning environment. In my empirical part I show the results of my survey which was carried out in two primary schools. 70 students grade 6 participated in the questionnaire, where I tried to find out students' motivation structure for learning this subject, the differences in gender according to the level of motivation, together with the level of motivation considering expected learning effectiveness. I estimated that students are more autonomously motivated for work at lessons. They don’t need any control to be motivated. This kind of motivation brings more action, interest, perseverance and effort and, of course, better learning success. Knowledge which has been gained that way is deeper and more permanent. The results have also shown that gender- that means boys and girls are not differently motivated for work in Home Economics. Another thing that I have found out is the fact that successful students don't show higher motivation for their work and that the level of motivation doesn't depend on the expected learning success at the end of the school year