Academic Motivation and the Culture of School in Childhood and Adolescence

Schools, as one form of complex organizational settings, are regulated by often invisible expectations, understandings, and values that comprise the culture of the institutions. This volume will extend the already substantial understanding of academic motivation by moving beyond important and well studied relational and personal variables to an examination of school culture and motivation. Prevailing normative expectations for students are constructed and guided by cultural values and shape student motivation and achievement in powerful ways. This value system, however, is often left invisible in motivational analyses. Chapters in this volume challenge the prevailing discourse that equates ethnic minority with culture and places the cultural assumptions guiding schools outside the sphere of cultural inquiry.