Motivation and learning environment differences between resilient and nonresilient Latino middle school students

Abstract

This study tries to address the problems of Latino students by drawing on two distinct and emerging theoretical frameworks: (a) educationally resilient students and (b) classroom learning environments. The authors compared the motivation and learning environment of 60 resilient and 60 nonresilient Latino middle school students from a multiethnic metropolitan city located in the south central region of the United States. The multivariate analysis and univariate post hoc tests revealed that resilient students had significantly higher perceptions of involvement, satisfaction, academic self-concept, and achievement motivation than nonresilient students. The discriminant function analysis revealed that the variables of academic aspirations, involvement, academic self-concept, expectations for high school graduation, not being held back in school, and satisfaction were related most highly to the overall discriminant function. Results are discussed in relation to previous work on educational resilience and to implications for improving the education of students at risk of failure.