Educational demotivation of the first-grade high school students in the rural areas: A grounded theory study

Nowadays, educational demotivation is one of the serious challenges and damages to Iran’s educational system at all levels. The aim of the present study was to qualitatively investigate the educational demotivation among the first cycle high school students in rural areas and to present a grounded theory. The statistical population included the first cycle male high school students in the rural areas of Dehlorān city in the academic year 2012-2013. The research sample included 17 students who were selected using purposeful sampling method and based on the »theoretical saturation principle«. Also, the research instrument was the in-depth interviews. The process of data analysis included three coding phases: open, axial, and selective. The open coding resulted in 59 initial concepts, which were reduced to 27 themes by modifying the similar codes. In the second phase, and through refining the concepts, the eight major categories were formed: »family capital«, »cross fields«, »teaching style«, »the hidden self«, »diverse roaming«, »traffic challenges«, »forms and contradictions of the assessment system« and» reductionism of literacy to reading and writing«. Finally, based on the discovered major categories, the central focus of the research, namely the academic anxiety as a behavioral, institutional and cultural poverty was determined and a grounded theory was developed.