Chapter 8: An Amotivated Adolescence: How One Rugby Game and Two Teachers Changed My Self-Beliefs and the Course of My Academic Life

Most academic motivation researchers study positive or functional motivation, and try to understand how self-efficacy, or learning goals, or self-determination positively foster academic achievement. But many adolescents do not display functional academic motivation, and discussions of the flip side of functional motivation—dysfunctional motivation or academic amotivation—may be instructive when exploring the motivation of certain groups of teens. Few researchers focus on academic amotivation, but Canadian researchers Legault, Green-Demers, and Pelletier (2006) have recently discussed how some adolescents feel disconnected from typical academic and social contexts, and are likely to be bored, lack concentration, feel higher levels of stress, and in extreme but all-too-common cases, drop out of school. Adolescent amotivation leads to frustration and discontentment, and hampers academic productivity and general well-being. For academically amotivated adolescents, school is drudgery, with few rewards available from a system that rewards academically motivated students, and with teachers that usually spend time and attention on the students who learn quickly, who appear interested, and who display high levels of effort, persistence, and who make sound academic choices.