Specifics of the Relationship between Motivation and Values in High School Students of Different Sex and Age

Abstract

The paper presents outcomes of a research on sex and age specificity of motivational and value-based attitude to learning in high school students.The study involved schoolchildren of 8—11 grades (aged 14 to 17 years) of two Moscow schools with a traditional learning paradigm.The students’ motives were revealed by factor analysis of their answers to 70 statements, in four selected groups of boys and girls separately.A total of 328 people were interviewed, including 94 boys of the younger group (8—9 grades) and 75 boys of the senior group (10—11 grades), 90 girls of the younger group (grades 8-9) and 69 girls of the senior group (10—11 grades).Correlations between the nature of motivation and value orientations were also identified based on the ranking of 12 terminal (according to Rokich) and 10 learning values: common protocols were obtained for 67 boys (8—9 classes) and 53 boys (10—11 classes), 60 girls (8 9 classes) and 59 girls (10—11 classes).As a result, it was revealed that the age-related changes in motivation and its relationship with values at high school age have a pronounced sex-based specificity.For boys, successful learning in the process of growing up remains a means for approval and self-affirmation, and the relationship between motivation and values is not consistent enough.As for girls, the relationship between achievement motivation, self-determination, self-affirmation and corresponding values becomes more consistent as they grow up, which indicates a more mature perception of the process of learning.