Academic Motivation and the Culture of Schooling

Decades of reserach indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in homogenous American schools serving middle class, average achieving, Anglo-student populations. Thisedited volume will argue that school culture is a reflection of the society in which the school is embedded and comprises various aspects, including induvidualism, competition, cultural stereotypes, and extrinsically guided values and rewards. They address three specific conceptual questions: How dodifferences in academic motivation for diverse groups of students change over time? How do students' social cognitions influence their motivational processes and outcomes in school? And what has been done to enhance academic motivation? To answer this last question, the contributers describeempirically validated intervention programs for improving academic motivation in students from elementary school through college.