Academic Motivation: Connection with Subjectivity, Belief in Freedom, Life Position and Conscious Presence

Introduction. Subjectivity in the academic environment is associated with the ability of students to actively transform themselves and the surrounding reality, free and conscious choice; subjectivity contributes to the self-realisation of students, increasing their involvement in the educational process and the quality of knowledge obtained, and the task of increasing the subjectivity of both teachers and students remains relevant. At the same time, there is insufficient research clarifying the connections between subjectivity and academic motivation in both Russian and world science.

Objective. To determine the relationship of subjectivity, personal life stance, belief in freedom and conscious presence and types of academic motivation.

Materials and Methods. Sixty-five students (average age – 18.7 years) studying in 1–3 courses of humanities specialities took part in the study. Research methods: subjectivity questionnaire (Volkova et al., 2023), academic motivation scale (Gordeeva, Sychev, Osin, 2014); questionnaire "Life position of personality" (Leontiev, Shilmanskaya, 2019); methodology for assessing conscious presence (adaptation of Mitin et al., 2021); questionnaire "Belief in freedom/determinism" in adaptation (Mospan, Leontiev, 2021). Correlation analysis was applied for processing.

Results. Intrinsic motivation is related to subjectivity: thus, achievement motivation is most related to personal activity and harmony with life, self-development motivation - to life awareness and activity of life position, and cognitive motivation - to both awareness and activity, and to harmony with life. External types of motivation, on the other hand, are negatively related to subjectivity: introjected motivation showed a negative relationship with freedom of choice, capacity for reflexion, and belief in freedom, and externalised motivation - with capacity for reflexion and conscious presence. Both types of external motivation were negatively related to harmony with life.

Discussion. In this section each of the findings is analysed with reference to the research on subjectivity and academic motivation. It is found that the results of the study are consistent with the main definitions of the phenomenon of subjectivity and represent a support for improving the educational process.

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