What students need: a study about academic motivation

In this study we focus on university students and the factors that influence their academic motivation. Among these factors, the relationship with the teachers and the academic climate seem to play an essential role in the student's academic life. Observing the difficulties encountered by some students, another factor was taken into account, namely the anxiety about the future career, which is an increasingly common problem that reaches its peak at student age.Our first objective consisted in identifying the differences in terms of academic climate, teacher-student relationship (TSR), career anxiety and academic motivation depending on the field of study. The second objective was to identify the relationship between academic climate, TSR and academic motivation in the university environment, and to investigate the influence of the career anxiety on the academic motivation of students. The results show that TSR and the academic climate are predictors of academic motivation and that the anxiety towards future career can moderate the relationship between school climate and academic amotivation and also between TSR and academic motivation.