Representations of Study and Students’ Academic Motivation

The motivation and attitudes of students towards studying influence the way they learn, their performance at school and the objectives they set themselves. The study, based on a sample of 200 Italian eighth graders aims to explore students’ metaphors of study. An integrated approach was performed analysing the data with an inductive, data-based, qualitative approach as well as a deductive, theory-based, quantitative approach. The results identified some key attributes of metaphors based on their semantic and figurative aspects. The most frequent categories that emerged are closely associated with classic constructs of the literature on academic motivation.