Abstract
The motivation in the school context is a much discussed theme in the contemporaneity of education in different places and cultures. The present study dealt with the motivation construct in the light of the Self Determination Theory and sought to evaluate the motivation to learn from the first years of elementary school in two different cultural realities: Brazil and Chile. A total of 528 children participated in the study, of which 268 were Brazilian and 260 were Chilean who answered two questionnaires on motivation. The method used was for descriptive data analysis with survey designs and correlational. The results showed that most of the children in the two contexts investigated were motivated to learn. The discussion of the results considered the educational implications of the two cultural realities.
Keywords:
Intrinsic motivation; extrinsic motivation; elementary school