Academic Achievement, Academic Self-Concept, and Academic Motivation of Immigrant Adolescents in the Greater Toronto Area Secondary Schools

Abstract

The pattern of immigration in the last few decades coupled with the tendency for ethnic differences in educational attainment that persist over subsequent immigrant generations has led to an increasing gap in academic achievement between immigrant children, who have received little or none of their education in Canada, and nonimmigrant children, who have received all of their education in Canada. Educators tend to stress the socioeconomic and cultural factors affecting immigrant adolescents' academic achievement to the exclusion of the psychological factors that are also at play in the lives of immigrant adolescents. Therefore, this study examined the impact of psychological indicators, such as academic self-concept and academic motivation, on the academic achievement of immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents in the Greater Toronto Area secondary schools. The immigrant adolescents in this study performed as well as their nonimmigrant counterparts in English and overall school performance. The immigrant adolescents outperformed their nonimmigrant counterparts in mathematics. The immigrant adolescents had higher levels of math and school self-concepts as well as higher intrinsic and extrinsic motivation than their nonimmigrant counterparts. Math self-concept was the only predictor of math GPA for both immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents. However, both verbal self-concept and school self-concept were the best predictors of English GPA for both immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents. While school self-concept was the only predictor of overall GPA for nonimmigrant adolescents, the additional factors of math self-concept and extrinsic motivation-external regulation were the best predictors for immigrant adolescents.