Peers and academic motivation

• Applicant: Dr. Marion Reindl
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 287038290

In the proposed project the importance of peer context for academic motivation is to be analyzed. Despite the increasing importance of peers for adolescents, their influence on the development of academic motivation has been accorded relatively little attention. Previous research has shown that peers play an important role in other developmental areas such as psychosocial adjustment. In order to differentiate influences within the peer context, both dyad and group relations in the forms of best friends and social cliques have been examined. Based on theoretical constructs such as the social cognitive learning theory, social support and social identity concepts, we suspect that young people closely pattern their academic motivation after the academic motivation of their peers. To make good use of peers influences for the depiction and explanation of the development of academic motivation, the plan is to (1) test a theoretical model, (2) analyze differentiation in the effects of selection and socialization, and (3) analyze transfer processes and their conditions. To test these hypotheses, a quantitative longitudinal study with five measuring points has been designed. The operationalization of peer networks ensues via sociometric processes. Academic motivation is operationalized in manifold occurrences in terms of goal orientations and student evaluations of the academic value they find in scholastic subjects (German, mathematics, English, physics). The sample will consist of a total of 1200 adolescents of which 600 will be interviewed at the beginning of the fifth grade and 600 at the beginning of seventh grade. Thus, different stages of early adolescence and their inherent variation regarding the importance of peers can be accounted for. Hypothesis testing will occur via social network analysis (differentiation of selection and socialization processes) and latent growth curve models (transfer processes and their conditions).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Markus Dresel