Emotional and Motivational Barriers to Effective Learning of Students

Abstract

This study aims to determine and evaluate the learning barriers of high school students in Turkey. These barriers are examined from various emotional and motivational dimensions, such as self-efficacy, self-regulation, deficiency of professional/parental/sibling support and consultancy, learning environment, fear of failure, rejection, criticism and judgment and embarrassment. These dimensions in learning barriers influence all kinds of measurements to be carried on about students. Therefore, describing and revealing them may help handle the measurement outcomes gathered from students in different ways. The study employed a descriptive research methodology to collect data from all regions of Turkey. In this study, six scales were administered to the participants, who are 2175 high school students from the ninth, tenth and eleventh grades attending high schools. The results of the study suggest that students have some difficulty in planning how to study, which is a self-regulative skill. The participants’ views mostly show that teacher support can make a strong learning barrier. Parental support is also another learning barrier.  Furthermore, it was found out that the learning environment in classrooms did not motivate students to learn.