How I could improve academic motivation of my students in an industrial high school?

Abstract

Traits like intelligence, academic potential and motivation are personal ones that have a major role in student's educational achievement. As a teacher has little effect on the growth of students' intelligence and his/her main task is begetting and applying motivation, I chose academic motivation as the main problem in the current research. The sample is 14 third grade students of an industrial high school. A glance at their school results showed that only two of them passed the final exam last year (2009-2010). It seems that most of these students planed to get married or find a job after graduation and they had not enough attention and motivation for studying well to get into university. Regarding the problem, I tried to find a way to improve the students' academic motivation. Based on an action research design, the paper describes the problem and my actions as their teacher. The results showed some improvements at the first measuring. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.