Motivational Factors towards School for Diverse Students1
Motivational Factors Towards School for Culturally Diverse Students:
Interest and Respect
Andrea Grafstein and Alayna Washington
University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum
Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews & Dr. Christy Byrd, Faculty Mentors
Department of Teacher Education, MSU College of Education
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to our research mentor Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews for her guidance and instruction throughout the research process. Also, special thanks to Dr. Christy Byrd for providing her resources, time and services throughout our research process. The knowledge gained through this experience has been comparable to none.
Motivational Factors towards School for Diverse Students1
Motivational Factors towards School for Diverse Students1
Introduction
Research indicates that student motivation and interest in school is positively correlated with student achievement. According to Gottfried (1985), students with strong intrinsic motivation should enjoy learning, show task persistence, strive to learn more, and show higher achievement than children with relatively low intrinsic motivation.Within the school climate, some factors that affect interest and motivation towards school for students are perceptions of respect and student cultural differences. However, studies may not focus on multiple demographic factors at the same time when assessing student interest and motivation. In this study, we define motivation as the desire to do well in the school setting. We define interest as the level of desire a student has to be in school and to learn the material presented. Therefore, according to our definitions and Gottfried’s analysis, students with intrinsic motivation and interest to do well in the school setting will show higher achievement. The current study examines how student perceptions of respect and their personal demographics, such as gender, race, learning ability, and socioeconomic status, can reflect their interest and motivation towards school.We define respect as the student’s perceived feeling that they are understood, cared about, and encouraged to be who they are and to try their very best and demographics as a student’s social identity markers: gender, race, learning ability, and socioeconomic status.
Methods
Surveyswere administered to7th and8th grade students at a suburban middle school in the Midwest.Study participants (n=477) included middle school students enrolled in a predominantly white middle school in a Midwestern city in the 2011-2012 school year.Data collected included questions pertaining to student perceptions of respect from their peers, administrators, and teachers, their levels of interest in school and curriculum, as well as their individual demographics.Students were asked to rank their opinions towards each question on a 1-5 scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Sample survey questions include: “I enjoy learning”, ‘I participate regularly in class”, “I look forward to coming to school every day”, and “I get bored with the material covered in my classes.” Students were also asked to rank whether or not they feel respected by their peers, teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. Students were also asked to indicate their race and ethnicity and whether or not they had special education status. Students’ socioeconomic status was measured by how many books and computers are available to them at home. We analyzed survey results by examining the Pearson correlation, the significance values, and the mean differences between survey item responses.
Results
The results of this study indicate that perceptions of respect for cultural differences do not highly correlate with student interest in school; however, students from different demographic backgrounds do show variations in interest in school. Our results indicatea weak to moderate correlation between students’ perceptions of respect from peers, teachers, administrators, and faculty members and student interest at school. Perception of respect from teachers wasdetermined to be the most important indicator of high interest levels in school for students.
Our results also indicate differences between Caucasian and culturally diverse students’ responses. We found that Caucasian students have more interest towards school, with an average response of 3.2. Hispanic students were found to have the lowest level of interest towards school with an average response of 2.8. The difference between these two groups (Caucasians and Hispanics) was found to be significant (p=.001).
In terms of socio-economic status, we found that there is a significant difference (p=.0001) between student interest levels among students with over 100 books at home and students with fewer than ten books at home. We also found a significant difference (p=.003) among students with two or more computers at home and students with one computer at home.
Special education status was not determined to significantly influence student motivation or interest.
Conclusion
Our findings demonstrate that that there are several factors that influence a student’s motivation and interest levels in school; specifically, a student’s perception of respect for cultural differences in a school setting. This information can be used to guide changes in the way teachers and administrators increase student achievement.
Discussion and Implications:
Our findings have severalimplications for educators and researchers. Respect from teachers plays a crucial role in determining academic achievement.Our findings were supported by previous researchersthat found that strong teacher support and student-teacher relationships foster intrinsic motivation(Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1988).
Our study also found that demographicsplay a significant role in student motivation and interest levels, especially between Hispanic and Caucasian students, and teachers should consider students’ cultural backgrounds when differentiatingtheir lessons. Further research, could determine whether or not this is due to cultural nuances, such as language differences.
Lastly, students from a higher socio-economic status had more interest in school. This finding is supported by prior research in which students with more potential “risk factors”, such as, low socioeconomic status and students of color, were less interested in school (Murdock 1999).
This study also has implications for future research. Our results indicate that there is no significant difference for interest and motivationbetween students who have special education status and those who do not. Existing research discusseshow to motivate students in special education, which prompted us to believe that these students were less motivated and interested in school; however, we found no research that explores interest for special education students. Thus, more research should be conducted on this topic.
Additionally, more research can be conducted on middle school students in general. We found that within educational literature, there is scant research on this student population. Because middle school is such a significant transitional period, further research can lead to interesting findings on how to best meet these student’s academic needs.
Overall, this study shows that there are implications that illustrate differences in motivation towards school based on student backgrounds. An understanding of this research could lead to additional research and strategies on how teachers can better motivate culturally diverse students in the classroom.
Motivational Factors towards School for Diverse Students1
References:
Motivational Factors towards School for Diverse Students1
Gottfried, A. E. (1985).Academic intrinsic motivation in elementary and junior high school students.Journal of Educational Psychology, 77 (6), 631-645.
Midgley, C. Feldlaufer, H., &Eccles, J.S. (1988). Student/teacher relations and attitudes toward mathematics before and after the transition to junior high school.Report produced by University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Institute for Social Research.
Murdock, T. (1999). The social context of risk: Status and motivational predictors of alienation in middle school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91 (1), 62-75.