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The purpose of this study is to show how students come to accept teacher guidance in lower track upper secondary schools. In Japan, lower track upper secondary schools, such as lower ranked full-time high schools, part-time high schools, and upper secondary specialized training schools, have accepted students who are unwilling to enter these schools. Teachers at these schools have therefore been troubled with difficulties concerning student guidance, since these schools often confront deviant behavior, apathy, truancy and student drop-outs. Previous studies on school guidance in lower track upper secondary schools focused on the mechanisms that create and maintain difficulties regarding student guidance. These studies found the following two points. Firstly, students in lower track upper secondary schools have no reason to accept teacher guidance, because they have a low aspiration for academic achievement and status attainment. Secondly, when they wish to eliminate the conflict between students and teachers and prevent their students from dropping out, all teachers of these schools can do is give up on the socialization if their students. However, there is a school where most of the students accept teacher guidance regardless of whether they disobeyed or paid no attention to the guidance soon after they entered the school. I focused on this school and investigated the reasons why the students come to accept teacher guidance. The data for this study is based on fieldwork conducted in Y upper secondary specialized training school, and I mainly analyzed interview data with 13 students who had formerly resisted or ignored teacher guidance in the school and finally came to accept it. Students of school Y had various "orientations" that cannot be considered as aspiration for academic achievement or status attainment. They often had a "developmental orientation," an "approval orientation," and a "senior's role orientation." These orientations created opportunities through which students came to obey teacher guidance. These findings indicate that students in lower track upper secondary schools will came to trust their teachers and follow their guidance if teachers work on the students' orientations, especially the "approval orientation." These findings have an affinity with the "strengths-based approach," which has gathered attention in the offender treatment field. This study suggests that the "orientations-based approach" for student guidance, which works not on rule- breaking behavior but the various orientations that are considered as students' resources, and is effective when lower ranked upper secondary schools encourage their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between autonomous motivation and academic adjustment based on the perspective of self-determination theory. It also examined motivational profiles to reveal individual differences and the characteristic of these profiles for groups with varying levels of autonomous and controlled regulation (autonomous, controlled, high motivation, and low motivation). Data were collected from 442 junior high school students for academic motivation, academic performance, academic competence, meta-cognitive strategy, academic anxiety, apathy, and stress experience. Correlation analyses generally supported the basic hypothesis of self-determination theory that a more autonomous regulation style was strongly related to academic adjustment. The results also showed that persons with a high autonomous regulation and a low controlled regulation style were the most adaptive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic contingency of self-worth (ACSW) refers to the degree to which one's sense of self-worth is based on academic achievement. Past research on this subject primarily focused on the detrimental effects of ACSW on mental health and achievement. The present study examined both positive and negative effects of ACSW on motivation and achievement during one academic semester by conducting three successive questionnaire surveys. The participants were 154 junior high school students. The results show that when high ACSW students received poorer grades than their expectations, their state self-esteem decreased significantly, which evoked negative emotions. Then, their negative emotions were positively related to their final exam grades. However, when high ACSW students received better grades than their expectations, their state self-esteem increased, which evoked positive emotions. Subsequently, their positive emotions were positively related to their final exam grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic contingency of self-worth (ACSW) refers to the degree to which one's sense of self-worth is based on academic achievement. Past research on this subject focused on the joint influence of ACSW and achievement (such as success and failure) on a ective and motivational outcomes. However, the cumulative effects of past achievement have not been taken into consideration. This study examined how the interaction between ACSW and perceived cumulative achievement influenced motivation. The participants were 226 junior high school students. The results showed that when the self-report of cumulative achievement was high, ACSW enhanced the motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]