The Relationship of Academic Motivation and Psychological Well-being in Primary School Age

Abstract

The article presents data on the psychological well-being of primary school-age children with different types of academic motivation. The study involved 87 students of the 3rd-4th grades of Moscow secondary schools (41 boys and 46 girls). The questionnaires "Academic self-regulation" SRQ-A (modification and approbation on the Russian-language sample of T.O.Gordeeva, O.A.Sychev, M.F.Lynch), "Scale of psychological well-being of children aged 8-12 years" PWB-c (adaptation by D.V.Lubovsky, N.S.Milova), the projective technique "Unfinished sentences", allowing to identify indicators of motivation and psychological well-being (positive and negative aspects of children's lives). Positive connections of psychological well–being and components of its structure with intrinsic educational motivation, negative connections - with extrinsic academic motivation are established. It is shown that primary schoolchildren with a high level of psychological well–being are characterized by cognitive motivation, self-development motivation, awareness of the importance of educational activities for themselves, but at the same time - orientation to high academic performance. With a low level of psychological well-being in children, there is a pronounced extrinsic motivation, reflecting primarily the requirements of the teacher, a subjective perception of learning difficulties, a negative attitude to learning, preschool-type motivation with its hedonistic orientation.