Browsing by Author "Latvasto, Riitta"

This research is a part of a wider research in the metropolitan area. Junior high school and high school students (n=700) participated in a research about a meaningful and happy school in 2015. The goal is to chart what a meaningful and happy school is like and to get some concrete information about students to improve studying to be more up to date. The purpose of this research is to study the students motivation for studying in the metropolitan area and the needs for social and physical environment. One of the baselines used in this research is Ryan's & Decin's self-determination theory (2000). The research focuses on the answers (n=322) of the students concerning studying motivation, and the social and physical environments in three different junior high schools. The materials were collected through web inquiries. This is a quantitative partial taken from all material, which is analyzed by the Kruskall-Wallis test and variance analysis tests. The students' answers were separated into the students who need general, intensified and special support. The answers are used to find out if the students who need special support want the same matters as the students who need general and intensified support. And to study what kind of differences there are between the students who need special support and those who need general and intensified support. The results show that 86 % of the students, especially students who need special support, want areas to school for relaxing with possibilities to use computers. The students hope to have small rooms for studying by themselves privately. This was also suggested mostly by the students who need special support. At 82 % of students want to use gyms at playtime during the school day. The students who need general support pointed out that school is an important place for meeting friends. From the results we can see that students who need general and intensified support are more motivated to study than the students who need special support. We can affect to the students motivation for studying with support and early stage prevention. Schools can take advantage of the results of this study and they have chances to have an effect on the studying motivation and improving the environment for their students. Motivation and physical and social environment can be used for making school a better place for students.