School adaptation among immigrant youth from a Dutch integration program: The influence of acculturative stress and bicultural identity integration on academic motivation

Academic motivation represents a psychoeducational construct that is associated with the academic success of youth. For some immigrant youth, however, their academic motivation may be affected by the various challenges that they face during their settlement in a culturally diverse school that promotes different self-construal values and practices. The main goal of this study is to investigate the cultural match or mismatch between non-Western immigrant youth and the self-construal orientation typically promoted in Western schools, as well as how specific challenges associated with migration contribute to the development of different levels of academic motivation during their recent settlement. We hypothesize that non-Western immigrant youth experience cultural mismatch in a Western school, and that greater reports of migration challenges are associated with increases in levels of external motivation and decreases in levels of intrinsic motivation. To test these hypotheses, the present study was conducted among non-Western immigrant youth between 12 and 19 years old in their first year of attending a Dutch academic integration program in The Netherlands. Our findings highlight that non-Western immigrant youth are mismatched with the self-construal orientations typically promoted in Dutch schools, and that there is specificity in the way that migration challenges relate to different levels of academic motivation. These findings should be considered by Western educational stakeholders who aim to foster academic success for immigrant youth early on in their resettlement.