Les recherches qui se sont intéressées à l'étude du décrochage scolaire ont conduit à considérer l'abandon des études comme un processus qui s'inscrit à moyen ou long terme dans un parcours jalonné de nombreuses difficultés tant sur le plan personnel, que familial et scolaire (Ministère de l'Éducation nationale, 2012). Ces facteurs fragilisent la scolarité des élèves, en particulier celle des garçons qui montrent en général plus de problèmes d'adaptation à l'école que les filles (Royer, 2010). Plus récemment, les études prenant en considération les facteurs psychologiques ont mis en évidence la pertinence d'une approche préventive plus individualisée, ciblée sur l'expérience scolaire des élèves. L'objectif de cette thèse était d'analyser à partir d'une méthodologie quantitative l'influence de l'estime de soi, de la motivation scolaire et de la dépression sur le risque de décrochage scolaire auprès d'un échantillon de 265 élèves scolarisés au collège et au lycée dans des filières générales. Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié ces facteurs en fonction du sexe et de l'âge des élèves en prenant en compte la complexité des dimensions étudiées (Gurtner, Gorga, Monnard et Ntamakiliro, 2001 ; Harter, 1988 ). Les résultats que nous avons obtenus vont dans le sens du regard généralement porté sur ces dimensions, à savoir que les filles sont plus motivées et plus engagées dans leur scolarité, qu'elles présentent plus d'états dépressifs, alors que les garçons ont une meilleure estime d'eux-mêmes. Ils montrent également que plus les élèves sont âgés, moins ils sont motivés et plus ils présentent de risque de décrochage scolaire. Dans un second temps, nous nous sommes intéressés à l'influence des ces facteurs sur le risque de décrochage scolaire. Nous avons notamment montré le rôle médiateur de la dépression dans le lien entretenu entre l'estime de soi dans le domaine de la moralité et des conduites et l'état d'anxiété envers les mathématiques et le français avec le risque de décrochage scolaire. Plus spécifiquement, nous avons pu mettre en évidence que ce rôle joué par la dépression était d'autant plus important concernant les garçons, faisant de la détresse psychologique un facteur de risque incontournable dans le processus d'abandon scolaire des adolescents (Quiroga, Janosz et Marcotte, 2006). Ce travail de thèse confirme l'importance de s'attacher aux facteurs de risque personnels dans la compréhension des processus pouvant conduire un élève à rompre le lien avec l'école. Il montre également que cette question est centrale pour les garçons puisque ces derniers montreraient plus de difficultés d'ordre psychologique les conduisant à présenter plus de risque de décrochage scolaire que les filles. / Research on school drop-out has led to consider early school leaving as a medium- or long-term process down a path marked with numerous difficulties, as much on a personal and family level as educational (French Ministry of Education, 2012). These factors make a student's school éducation vulnerable, particularly for boys who generally experience more difficulty adapting to school than girls do (Royer, 2010). More recently, studies including psychological factors have pointed out the relevance of a more personalised préventive approach, based on the student's own educational experience. The goal of this thesis was to analyse the influence of self-esteem, academic motivation and dépression on the risk of dropping out, using quantitative methods on a sample of 265 middle- and high-school students in the general sector. First of all, we studied the above factors of self-esteem, academic motivation and dépression in relation to the sex and age of the students, taking into account the complexity of these three dimensions (Gurtner, Gorga, Monnard et Ntamakiliro, 2001 ; Harter, 1988 ). The results obtained correspond to the commonly held viewpoint that girls are more motivated and committed to their education and manifest more dépressive states than boys, while boys have a higher self-esteem. The results also show that the older students are, the less they are motivated and therefore more likely to drop out. Secondly, we studied the influence of these factors on the risk of drop-out. In particular, we pointed out the mediating role of depression in the established link between self-esteem in the area of morality and behavior and that of a state of anxiety towards maths and French with a risk of dropping out. More specifically, the study revealed that this same role played by depression is even more determinant for boys, making psychological distress an essential risk factor in the process of teenage dropout (Quiroga, Janosz et Marcotte, 2006). The research and analysis carried out for this thesis confirm the importance of focusing on the personal risk factors in order to understand the process that could lead a student to disconnect from school. It also shows that these personal factors become the central question for boys, since unlike girls, they seem to demonstrate more difficulties of a psychological order, creating a higher risk of dropout.

Many students find their first year of college to be the most difficult moment of their educational careers. Along with college acceptance comes new expectations, a rigorous curriculum, and the usual growing pains of young adulthood. Because of these challenges, many college students find it difficult, if not impossible to make it past their first year. Limited research has been conducted to address the overall efficiency of first year programs that colleges and universities have put in place to support these students. Considering the trials faced by first year students, it is important that we identify the organizational structures that will increase student success outcomes and lead to the completion of degree programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between college sophomore students’ academic motivation, academic self-efficacy, their perceptions of the support they received during their first-year advisory program, and their satisfaction with the advisement they received. The target population is students who completed their first year of college and returned to the college as sophomores. This quantitative study used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, the Academic Motivation Scale, and the Inventory of Academic Advising Functions-Student Version to measure academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, and student satisfaction; 526 freshmen students were contacted and invited to participate in the study. Responses from 57 participating students were used to answer five research questions. The study revealed that students who had high to moderate levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation displayed higher levels of satisfaction as it related to the academic counseling they received during their FYE. The study also revealed that only a small group of students felt that their first-year experience program led to them having a stronger sense of self-efficacy. As a result of the study, the researcher was able to find support in previous research that FYE programs have led to creating positive perceptions of about their overall college experience and their ability to do well.

The NAEP (2016) report shows that the performance of the country’s highest achievers is increasing in reading while the lowest-achieving students have lower scores than previous reports and are performing worse than ever. Not only are these students expected to succeed academically, these students must know how to problem solve, work in teams, and be creative. The longstanding issue of how to motivate students is not new. Motivation consists of the factors that stimulate the desire to attain a goal. Self-efficacy is defined as the belief in one's capabilities to carry out, organize and perform a task successfully (Bandura, 1997). Both are the driving forces that make people pursue a goal and overcome obstacles. Students with high senses of efficacy have the capacity to accept more challenging tasks, higher abilities to organize their time, increased persistence in the face of obstacles, exhibit lower anxiety levels, show flexibility in the use of learning strategies and have a high ability to adapt with different educational environments (Elmotaleb and Sahalof, 2013). High school students and entry-level college students are struggling to maintain the self-efficacy and motivation needed to accomplish rigorous and challenging tasks in both high school and college. This study addressed the deficiencies in the literature by providing an understanding of 10th grade students developmental self-efficacy sources, self-efficacy source experiences, and academic motivation. A total of 18 student participants in a 10th grade public school at a rural community in a southeastern state in the United States were interviewed for this study. A high school principal, three 10th grade teachers, and a high school guidance counselor also participated in the study. The study employed a qualitative methodology that focused on student’s voices to gain a better understanding of the development of self-efficacy sources and the effects on academic motivation. The findings revealed that students depicted their personal perceived self-efficacy based on the self-efficacy source development that had occurred in each student’s life, particularly the amount of mastery source experiences that students had successfully completed. Another finding indicated that the student participants based their personal perceived self-efficacy source development on how successful or unsuccessful they had been in school with special emphasis on students persuasion and physiological and affective source development. Evidence also supported that student participants academic motivation was based on the students personal perceived academic self-efficacy relating to all four mastery sources (mastery, vicarious, persuasion, physiological and affective). This research provides practitioners and stakeholders with a better understanding of students self-efficacy source developments and the impact that self-efficacy has on student academic motivation.

Enrollment by African American students in U.S. colleges and universities has increased since 2009, but graduation and retention remains low for this group. Within the African American community, education is considered a central aspect of social empowerment; however, the effect of discrimination, bias, and stereotyping are key when considering achievement indices within a cultural framework. The coping mechanisms that African Americans have developed to combat discrimination, bias, and stereotype threat may contribute to poor performance in college. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between racial socialization and African American students' academic motivation, academic self-efficacy, and likelihood of attending graduate school. Drawing from self-determination theory, it was hypothesized that the variables have a positive relationship. A quantitative survey design was used. One hundred-three African American undergraduate students were recruited via convenience sampling to participate in an online survey. Results from a multiple regression analyses indicated no significant relationship between the variables. The findings from this study are not consistent with previous findings that indicate racial socialization has an impact on African Americans' academic performance and motivations, implying the need for future research to include multiple variables that might impact outcomes such as family functioning, access to educational resources, or peer association. Greater numbers of African Americans enrolled in undergraduate programs may, in turn, increase the pool of participants eligible to attend graduate programs. Future research can help parents, researchers, and practitioners better understand the diverse and unique needs of African American youths.

Students enter the realm of higher education with a wide variety of beliefs about the purposes of attending university, which often relate to or reveal their various motivations for pursuing a post-secondary education. Research demonstrates that some student motivations align more fully with intrinsic factors, such as the love of learning or quest for excellence, while other student motivations align with extrinsic factors, such as vocational preparedness and monetary incentives (Vallerand et al., 1989). Using a Bourdieusienne lens, this study sought to place these student motivations in the larger sociocultural context and argue for greater opportunities for democratic equity in post-secondary environments. Relying on Self-Determination Theory, the study investigated the relationship between student academic motivations and longitudinal academic performance at a four-year, research oriented university in the United States. More importantly, the study sought to determine if institutional interventions, specifically incoming student orientation and a first-year experience (FYE) course, were valuable in helping align student motivations with the central values of higher education. Using the Academic Motivation Scale for College (AMS-C) across two years, the study employed a Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) and Latent Transition Analysis (LTA) to extract several profiles or “types” of student motivation and examined developmental variability of these profiles across time. Students who shifted from a more controlled to a more autonomous motivational profile in connection with institutional intervention demonstrated the highest levels of first-year academic performance and retention. However, these results diminished during the second academic year. Implications for practice suggest the importance of providing students with a values-based intervention to enhance autonomy-oriented academic motivation and to do so in a manner that sustains this enhancement throughout the academic career.

This research explored the understandings and perceptions of teacher leadership in the Year 8 classroom, as expressed by teachers and students at a Catholic school, and the relationship between this leadership and boys’ academic motivation. The researcher assumed that the classroom is an organisation (Cheng, 1994) where all teachers, perhaps even unknowingly (Crowther, 1996), exercise leadership and, furthermore, that this leadership results in positively influencing boys’ willingness to learn. The research was targeted at Year 8, the first year of high school in South Australia, because academic motivation is considered most problematic during and after transition into high school (Maehr & Midgley, 1991). The research was interpretivist, with symbolic interactionism as the theoretical perspective. The methodology adopted was case study, and data were collected using: a) Focus group interviews with eight members of the Year 8 ‘core’ teaching team on issues pertaining to teacher leadership in the classroom and how this positively influences boys’ academic motivation. b) A survey questionnaire about academic motivation, distributed to thirty-nine specially identified Year 8 students. c) Interviews with five key Year 8 student informants about teacher leadership and its impact on boys’ academic motivation. Data were analysed using a “general analytic strategy” (Yin, 1994, p.102), which included the adoption of a method of “successive approximation” (Neumann, 1997, p.427). Five categories of teacher leadership in the Year 8 classroom were identified: service; authenticity; transformation; empowerment; and community. The research also established that each category involves an array of qualities that help teacher leaders strengthen relationships in the classroom, and a set of actions that enable teacher leaders to help boys complete classroom tasks. Further, results indicate that by strengthening relationships and supporting boys to complete tasks, teacher leaders positively influence boys’ academic motivation. In addition, the research presents a framework for understanding and discussing the relationship between teacher leadership and boys’ academic motivation. This framework draws attention to the relational qualities and task specific strategies in each category of classroom leadership that positively influence boys’ academic motivation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ academic motivation and personality in different classes at a university in central Sweden. The study was conducted on students of economics and nursing, who were asked to answer a paper questionnaire. The questionnaire of consisted two parts, the first part was a TIPI test which measured personality traits using the Big Five theory and the second part was an AMS test that measured academic motivation. A total of 106 students participated in the study, including 50 from economics and 56 from nursing. The main result showed that the strongest significant correlation was between the personality trait conscientiousness and internal motivation. This relationship was found to completely rely on the nursing students replies, giving an indication that the nursing students who were self-disciplined and targeted were motivated by internal factors. This relationship was not found in the replies from the economics students. There was some difference between the two study specializations. / Syftet med studien var att undersöka förhållandet mellan akademisk motivation och personlighet hos studenter med olika studieinriktningar på en högskola i Mellansverige. Studien genomfördes på studenter från ekonom- och sjuksköterskeprogrammet som fick besvara en pappersenkät. Enkäten bestod av två delar, varav den första var ett TIPI-test som mätte personlighetsdimensioner med hjälp Big Five-teorin och den andra var ett AMS-test som mätte akademisk motivation. Totalt deltog 106 studenter i undersökningen, varav 50 från Ekonomprogrammet och 56 från Sjuksköterskeprogrammet. Huvudresultatet visade att det starkaste signifikant sambandet var mellan personlighetsdimensionen samvetsgrannhet och intern motivation. Detta samband visade sig helt bäras av sjuksköterskestudenternas svar, vilket gav en indikation på att de sjuksköterskestudenter som var självdisciplinerade och målinriktade motiverades av interna faktorer. Detta samband återfanns över huvudtaget inte hos ekonomstudenterna. Det förelåg en viss skillnad mellan de två olika studieinriktningarna.

It was a goal of this study to identify leadership strategies and other select variables such as instructional strategies, professional staff development, teacher-student relationship, parental support, and student academic motivation and their relationship with student achievement. Pearson correlations, ANOVA, Alpha Cronbach, construct validity, and regression tests were used to analyze the data that had the greatest significance on student achievement scores. The researcher concluded that instructional strategies, parental support, student academic motivation, and teacher expectation have the greatest significance on student achievement scores. Recommendations were suggested for classroom teachers, educational leaders, teacher preparation programs, and future researchers.

Motivation is a universal psychological phenomenon that determines all that we do. Self- determination Theory (SDT) and Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) each explain the academic motivation of university students and its relation to important academic outcomes (achievement, dedication, and well-being). Recently, an integration of these theories has been proposed (Drylund, 2009) which theorizes that achievement goals affect academic outcomes through their relationship with SDT constructs. The current study uses this integrative theory as a starting point but applies the critical realist perspective which posits that all empirical behaviours are produced by real generative mechanisms (Bhaskar, 1978). Although critical realism is considered vital to the advancement of psychology, its methodology and actual application has yet to be elaborated. Thus, the goals of the current study are: 1. to increase the current understanding of academic motivation; and, 2. to provide a method capable of facilitating research conducted from the critical realist perspective. Study 1 uses a variable-based approach and statistical analysis of questionnaire data from 385 undergraduate students; Study 2 uses a case-based approach through causal mapping of interview data from a purposeful sample of 12 Study 1 participants. Results support an academic motivational mechanism primarily influenced by autonomy satisfaction and controlling motivation that functions through the complex reciprocal relationships between achievement goals, competence satisfaction, and autonomous motivation. Comparison of Study 1 and 2 results supports the argument for case-based research from a critical realist perspective to aid in the further advancement of psychology.

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