Effective Participation and Motivation: An Investigation on Secondary School Students

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the secondary school students’ level of effective
participation and their motivation. This study employs a survey consisting of 251 secondary school students from the
schools located in Iğdır and Erzurum, in East of Turkey. The data of the study were gathered through "Effective
Participation Scale" and "Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivation Scale". The analysis of the obtained data showed that female
secondary school students are academically more engaged than the male students and male secondary school
students are more disaffected than the female students. It has been found that students engage in English and Turkish
lessons more than Mathematics and they are disaffected with Mathematics at most. It has been determined that
academically engaged students’ intrinsic motivations increase in the positive direction while that of the disaffected
students’ decrease as the class levels increase.