Teenagers’ Motivation Dips in High School—Research Shows Supportive Teachers Can Really Help

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Phys.org.

Adolescence is often characterized as a time of “storm and stress.” Young people are dealing with physical and cognitive changes and, as they move from childhood, can become increasingly distant from the adults in their lives.

In academic terms, this time of major hormonal change is also accompanied by a well-known dip in students’ motivation and engagement at school. This often coincides with students’ going to high school.

How can schools better help young people at this time? A new four-year study looked at the role of teaching support and whether teachers’ influence on students’ motivation and engagement grows or fades across the adolescent years.

The study involved 7,769 Year 6 New South Wales government school students who were tracked annually into Year 9. The students were part of the NSW Department of Education’s annual “Tell Them From Me” student survey.

The findings confirmed  a decline in students’ motivation and engagement from Year 6 to Year 9 (around 18% in total). This is consistent with the known dip in early- to mid-adolescence.

They also found in each of these four years, teaching support overall (and each of the three teaching support categories) was significantly associated with students’ motivation and engagement. That is, more teaching support was linked to greater student aspirations, valuing school, perseverance, homework effort, connections with school friends, and less misconduct at school.

Source: Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-teenagers-dips-high-school-teachers.html