Academic motivation of school going adolescents: gender and age difference

Abstract

Poor academic performance, poor reading habits, nonchalant attitude to class continuous assessment, deliberate refusal to do assignment are now the order of the day among students and have become a source of worry to education stakeholders, this study, therefore, assessed the academic motivation of school going, adolescents. Three research questions and two hypotheses were raised to guide this study. The study employed survey research design and population for this study comprised all the SS II students in Government-owned Senior Secondary Schools in Warri Township of Delta state. A sample size of two hundred (200) school going adolescents were drawn from selected secondary schools in Warri township of Delta State using multi-stage sampling technique. Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) with reliability coefficient 0.786 was used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentages and mean) and inferential statistics (t-test and ANOVA). The findings of the study revealed that school going adolescents are academically motivated; male and female school going adolescents differ in their academic motivation and older and younger school-going adolescents did not differ. Based on the findings, the study concludes that school going adolescents possess elements of academic motivation and gender played a role in their academic motivation while age did not. The study recommends that parents, teachers, and other education stakeholders should endeavour to extend an appropriate measure of support either psychologically or materially or physically to sustain this level of academic motivation among school-going adolescents.

Keywords: academic motivation, adolescents, school, age, gender