1. Objectifs

Intentions :
Les auteurs visent, entre autres, à vérifier les liens entre la motivation des adolescents envers l’environnement et leurs comportements environnementaux.

Questions/Hypothèses :
«The present study addresses three hypotheses. First, we hypothesised that higher autonomous environmental motivation would be related to more frequent environmental behaviours (e.g., Green-Demers et al., 1997). Second, we predicted that autonomous motivation would be greater toward the environment than toward education. Third, we expected to find higher autonomous environmental motivation in older than younger students, but lower autonomous academic motivation in older th an younger students.» (p. 195)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«A total of 200 students attending a French-speaking high school in suburban Montreal participated in this study.» (p. 195)

Instruments :
The authors ued three questionnaies:
- Motivation Toward the Environment Scale (MTES)
- Academic Motivation Scale (AMS)
- Frequency of environmental behaviours

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

The authors conclude that «[t]he current findings are promising with respect to Canada’s environmental future, because they suggest that youth have internalised environmental values in a way that is likely to lead to active, resilient pro-environmental behaviours (Pelletier, 2002). By contrast, the results on academic motivation echo other findings that point to youth’s increasing alienation and disengagement from school (Gottfried et al., 2001). Perhaps one lesson from these findings is that parents and teachers should decrease the emphasis on extrinsic motives to do weIl in school and instead try to nurture students’ individual interest in learning as weIl as highlight the opportunities for personal meaning. Reeve (1998) provided guidelines for how teachers and coaches can shift from controlling to more autonomy-supportive motivational methods, and Joussemet, Landry, and Koestner (2008) outlined how parents can behave in autonomy supportive ways.» (p. 198)