An investigation of Academic Motivation of Middle School Students in Nicosia, North Cyprus

ABSTRACT: The aim of the study is to investigate the extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation and amotivation of middle school students. To achieve this aim, a quantitative research approach was used and data was collected from private and public schools of the district Nicosia in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Nicosia district was selected as the region of the study, because this district could be regarded as a region to represent all middle schools of North Cyprus. In this study, there were 703 public school students and 245 private school students. Every private and public middle school in Nicosia was included in the study. Students from one of the public schools (n=295) were chosen for the pilot study. The number of the other Nicosia middle school students was 948. Since there was no problem in the pilot study, 295 students from this study were added to the original sample and a total of 1243 students were obtained in the actual study. Survey Research method was used to investigate the motivation of the students. The data were collected with the scale prepared for the students both in private and public schools. The items were in Turkish which was the mother tongue of the students. The instrument consisted of two sections with 34 items in total. The questions 1 to 6 asked students their gender, grade level, mother’s education, mother’s nationality, father’s education and father’s nationality. The questions from 7 to 34 asked the students to state why they came to school. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used for analysis of the data. Analysis of the data included the differences between amotivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation of the students according to gender, grade level, mother’s education, mother’s nationality, father’s education and father’s nationality. Keywords: Middle school students, Extrinsic Motivation, Amotivation, Intrinsic Motivation. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………