Schools, Academic Motivation, and Stage‐Environment Fit

From the time individuals first enter school until they complete their formal schooling, children and adolescents spend more time in schools than in any other place outside their homes. Exploring all of the possible ways in which educational institutions influence motivation and development during adolescence is beyond the scope of a single chapter. In this chapter I discuss the ways in which schools influence adolescents' social- emotional and behavioral development through organizational, social, and instructional processes ranging from those based in the immediate, proximal relation between students and the tasks they are asked to perform to the role that principals and the school boards play in setting school-level and district-level policies, which in turn influence the social organization of the entire school community. I discuss at length three examples of the ways in which these multiple organizational levels interact synergistically to influence adolescent development through their impact on the daily experiences that adolescents in the United States encounter as they move through the American school system. The first example focuses on the role of school transitions, the second on the role of curricular tracking, and the third on extracurricular activities. Few of these processes have been studied in countries other than the United States. I assume similar processes are true in other countries, but this remains to be demonstrated empirically.