The Relationship between Self-Determination and Academic Motivation among Senior High School Students in Aceh Province, Indonesia

Abstract

Recent research had shown importance towards self-determination, academic motivation and other concepts in higher educational research and evaluation. However, self-determination is necessary for students. It helps the students develop skills in decision making and recognising flawless abilities for successful in academic field (Loman, Vatland, Strickland, Horner & Walker, 2010). Similarly, existing theory and research (Deci & Ryan, 1985) have shown that self-determination and achievement motivation play a prominent role in the academic performance of learners. Correspondingly, academic motivation contributes to students` success due to students` desire toward their learning ability in school. The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of self-determination and academic motivation as well as the relationship between the two variables. This is a cross sectional quantitative study. Data were collected via survey method. The sampling procedure employed was stratified random sampling upon the research sample size consisted of 300 senior high school students in Aceh province, Indonesia. Admittedly, the data were analysed through descriptive statistic and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. Based on the analysis, the research findings depicted that senior high school students in Aceh experienced a high level of self-determination which included autonomy, competence and relatedness. The results also showed that they have high level of academic motivation. Additionally, the finding also illustrated that there is a positive significant correlation between self-determination and academic motivation among senior high school students in Aceh. This finding could provide crucial information for education department and family towards improving the understanding of students abilities in order to develop self-determination and academic motivation. For future research, it should involve different and more concepts of both sample and variable that can measure academic motivation and self-determination in order to gain diversity outcome from the study.