Analysis of Achievement Motivation and Academic Engagement of Students in the Nigerian Classroom

Motivating students so that they can succeed in school is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Getting students to learn and sustaining their interest in what they are learning is one of the major objectives of teachers in the classroom. This study therefore attempts to determine the impact of achievement motivation on students’ academic engagement. Three hypotheses were stated. Using Achievement Motivation and Academic Engagement questionnaire administered on 540 senior secondary students’ data was generated for the study. Analysis of the data revealed that achievement motivation has a significant impact on academic engagement with highly motivated students being more academically engaged than the moderately and lowly motivated students. Also result revealed that male students were more motivated than female student and, age also had a significant influence on achievement motivation. Based on this result, recommendations were made on how to raise the achievement motivation of students in order to get them more engaged in school work. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n3p385