Peculiarities of the first year university students’ motivation for learning in samples of Riga and Smolensk

The demand for tertiary education among young people is growing worldwide. However, in the first months of the studies, freshmen face increasing difficulties, which sometimes negatively affect their learning motivation. For the successful pedagogical process, teachers need to study the motivation of students of the first study year, monitor it and take into account its peculiarities while developing learning materials and choosing educational strategies. The article presents the results of an international study of freshmen’s motivation. The study aim to compare the motivation of the first-year students at the universities of Riga and Smolensk, to identify prevailing motives and to assess the impact of the psychological atmosphere in the student group on their motivation. In the survey carried out in December 2019, 129 students from two universities in Riga (Latvia) and Smolensk (Russia) participated. The tools for collecting information were the technique of diagnostics of learning motivation by 7 content scales and the technique of measuring the psychological climate in the collective by 10 bipolar scales. For data processing, descriptive statistics, analysis of statistical indicators, and Spearman correlation analysis were used. In both national samples, professional motives for learning prevail over other motives, while prestige motives and avoidance motives take the penultimate and last place relatively. The importance of other groups of learning motives is assessed somewhat differently. For the Smolensk sample of students it was found out that their motivation to learn depends on the psychological atmosphere in the group, especially on the overall atmosphere of success in the group. However a similar correlation has not been revealed in the survey of the Riga sample of students. The study shows that a few months after the start of studying, the first-year students’ overall motivation has not dropped below the critical level. However, for more successful training, it could and should be improved. Some ways to increase freshmen’s motivation for learning are proposed in the article.