Self-Motivation and Academic Performance                       1

Self-Motivation and Academic Performance

Kuan Ju Chen SRJC Psych 1A Ms. Binh Nguyen

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Look back into your academic career; have you been the one who stand out in the class with the perfect attendance and flawless behavior? Or have you been the student who often miss class and turn in assignments late? Do you know what creates the differences between the two types of students? The derivation of teenage students academic motivation attracted many peoples attention in the early twentieth century. Many scholars did researches on the topic and discovered a few reasons. From the reasons the scholars discovered, the self-motivation has a direct and strong impact on teenage students academic performance. Students with strong self-motivation can develop techniques to improve their grades and academic performances while students with less self-motivation tend to neglect the techniques they can use to help improving their grades and academic performances. According to the journal, Self-Motivation for Academic Attainment: The Role of Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Personal Goal Setting by Zimmerman, Bandura and Martinex-Pons (1992): Parents set goal and students self-belief play an important role in teenagers academic motivation, which plays a critic role in teenagers later on performance on their career after education. Parents were the authority throughout ones growing and learning process, they definitely have certain level of influence on students as they enter their teenage hood. It was studied that parental aspiration is affective to childrens behavior, including their academic achievement (eg. Henderson, 1982; Majoribanks, 1978); however, the impact of parental goal setting was not included in most of the research field. This answer is most likely

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to satisfy the highly self-motivated ones who were raised by parents with high expectations on their child. However, it takes more than the parental aspiration to motivate a student to achieve high academic goal. As teenagers grow older, they become more independent to their parents, thus, parental aspiration and parental setting goal is less effective in comparison to teenaged students own self-regulate motivation. Locke and Latham (1990) proved that extrinsic goals can be achieved by organizational plans and practices. Bandura developed a scale to measure students self-efficacy and how it affects students to apply the strategies to regulate and improve their study results. In Banduras scale, learning techniques such as planning and organizing their academic activities, transforming instructional information using cognitive strategies to understand and remember materials being taught, resisting distractions, motivating themselves to complete school works, structuring environments conducive to study and participating in class. Zimmerman, Bandura and Martinez-Pons (1992), play an important role in teenage students academic result. Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1992) found the evidences supported a close relationship between students use of self-regulated learning strategies and their perceptions of academic efficacy. The result shows that students with higher self-efficacy and self-perceived capability are better learning strategies users. Academic self-efficacy refers to the subjective convictions that one can successfully carry out given academic tasks at designated level (Schunk, 1991). The causes and effects are related as listed: the students self-regulatory efficacy affects their academic

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self-efficacy, which affects the students personal goal setting, which influences the students academic performance, including their grades. A student must have the desire wishing to accomplish his or her goal regardless of either it is parents goal setting or students self-motivations that encourage students to pursue the better academic performances. Where there is a will, there is a way. Other than academic performance, what else does self-motivation can do to a teenagers life? After the teenage hood, teenagers will leave school, instead of academic performance, their career performance, which later on will decide their social status, become the direct affected side of their lives. According to the journal, Self-Motivation for Academic Attainment: The Role of Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Personal Goal Setting by Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1992), the previous academic performance has a direct impact on students performances because it affects students perceived self-efficacy, which related to students goal setting as stated in previous paragraph. In the journal, Self-Efficacy Beliefs as Shapers of Children's Aspirations and Career Trajectories by Albert Bandura, Claudio Barbaranelli, Gian Vittorio Caprara and Concetta Pastorelli (2001), it was written in the introduction that Perceived self-efficacy occupies a central role in the casual structure of social cognitive theory because efficacy beliefs affect adaptation and change not only in their own right, but through their impact on other determinants. This statement provides a clear impact that self-motivation and self-efficacy has besides academic field. Observing the society, the elite

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part of the society structure is mainly consisting of people who are highly educated. To achieve high education degree, outstanding academic performance is the essential element. As a result, in cognitive society structure, the lower income with relatively low social status ones are those did not receive equal quality and amount of education as the elite ones did. Self-motivation is affected by its own previous results from many different aspects, and academic is the most direct one. Once the students receive results not as the expect, their self-efficacy is most likely to decrease and then result the lack of motivation to practice the learning techniques. From the researches that had been conducted in recent past, it is clear that the students self-motivation has further impact than academic performances. For those who have fostered their self-motivation and self-regulate learning techniques, it is not a trouble to develop a higher level of self-efficacy nor to maintain the habit they developed throughout past experience. In the other hand, for those who did not develop their self-efficacy due to lack of self-motivation, the lack of self-motivation can improve via correct learning techniques and positive academic results. We all have wondered why there are such great differences between the ones who are strongly motivated and self-regulated and the ones who do not care about academic and career. It is understandable now that self-motivated students obtained their perceived self-efficacy from the previous satisfying result and possibly parents goal setting. Now, the elite students achievements are no as mysterious as they were before.

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References Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (2001, January). Self-efficacy beliefs as shapers of childrens aspirations and career trajectories. Child Development, 72(1), 817-206. Bong, M. (2004, July). Academic motivation in self-efficacy,task value,achievement goal orientations, and attributional beliefs. The Journal of Educational Research, 97(6), 287-297. Moen, R., & Doyle, K. O., Jr. (1978). Measures of academic in motivation:a conceptual review. Research in Higher Education, 8(1), 1-23. Olson, J. M. (1993). Review:everything you always wanted to know about attitude. The Psychology of Attitudes, 4(4), 358-365. Tirole, J., & Roland, B. (2003, July). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The Review of Economic Studies, 70(3), 489-520. Zimmerman, B. J., Bandura, A., & Martinez-Pons, M. (1992). Self-motivation for academic attainment:the role of self-efficacy beliefs and personal goal setting. American Educational Research Journal, 29(3), 663-676.