Understanding teachers’ motivation for and commitment to teaching: profiles of Chinese early career,early childhood teachers

ABSTRACT

To better understand the reasons underlying attrition and the teacher shortage, and to develop ways to attract and retain high-quality teachers in early childhood education, it is necessary to explore teacher motivation and commitment to teaching. Although previous research has investigated various aspects of teacher motivation and commitment to teaching, little attention has been paid to this in the context of early childhood teachers, especially early career teachers. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 12 early career, early childhood teachers in mainland China, this study aims to examine early career early childhood teachers’ motivation to teach and commitment to teaching in the Chinese context. Four distinct types of early career, early childhood educators were identified: committed passionate, committed compromiser, undecided, and uncommitted. Each of these had unique motives for teaching and different levels of commitment to kindergarten teaching in mainland China. The four types of early career early childhood teachers identified in this study demonstrate the diversity and complexity of teaching motivation and commitment to teaching in the field of early childhood education. The findings from this study can provide implications for policy-makers and teacher educators to enhance novice teachers’ motivation and commitment to teaching in the early childhood context.     

Reasons for suboptimal learning in medical microbiology

Medical microbiology presents a challenge to undergraduate students, mostly due to its extensive content and complexity of unfamiliar terminology. In addition to a narrative review of the literature, we report findings on students’ motivation for and approach to learning in the Infections module of an undergraduate medical curriculum, and their perceived lack of retention of knowledge acquired in the module, as determined by a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire. When students experienced information overload, they reverted to performance goals and the wrong motivation for learning. Their focus turned primarily to being successful in tests and examinations, and they consequently adopted a surface approach to learning. Surface learning and memorisation of facts without understanding its content usually result in moderate retention of knowledge, which could handicap the development of clinical reasoning. However, the concern about students’ perceived poor retention of knowledge can be laid to rest – the prognosis is not discouraging after all.     

Differential prospective relationships of social-oriented and individual-oriented achievement motivations with achievement goals and affective wellbeing: A 1-year follow-up study

This study aimed to investigate the differential prospective relationships of social-oriented achievement motivation (SOAM) and individual-oriented achievement motivation (IOAM) with student's adoption of specific achievement goals and their affective wellbeing (AWB). A total of 332 Chinese university students (M_age = 19.139; Female = 75%) voluntarily participated in the baseline and the 1-year follow-up surveys of this study. The factor score path analysis results showed statistically significant positive paths from SOAM and IOAM at baseline to performance goals and mastery goals, respectively, at follow-up. Moreover, a statistically significant positive path was found from SOAM at baseline to negative affective experiences, at follow-up, and no association was found between IOAM and AWB, after controlling for achievement goals. The findings suggest the usefulness of raising educators' and parents' awareness regarding the double-edged sword of utilizing socially valued motives to promote performance approach goals in individuals because such values potentially lowering their psychological wellbeing.     

藏族大学生数学学习心理及其相关因素调查报告

对甘南合作民族师范高等专科学校藏汉双语理科教育系的藏汉双语数学教育专业8个年级的153名学生,就数学学习的动机、情感、兴趣、态度、意志和认识6方面进行问卷调查,发现大学生与中小学生具有基本相同的心理特征,在部分动机因素、认识、意志和态度等方面大学生比中小学生有所提高。应增加中小学课程中的应用性知识、突出师范性、教师变换角色．体现学生主体、教师主导的作用,用书面语施教、加强教师的继续教育和促使学生家长了解社会。     

Students’ achievement goals,emotion perception ability and affect and performance in the classroom: a multilevel examination

Performance at school is affected not only by students’ achievement goals but also by emotional exchanges among classmates and their teacher. In this study, we investigated relationships between students’ achievement goals and emotion perception ability and class affect and performance. Participants were 949 Greek adolescent students in 49 classes and their Greek language and mathematics teachers. Results from multilevel analyses indicated that students’ mastery-approach and performance-approach goals were positively related to positive affect whereas performance-avoidance goals were negatively related to positive affect. At class-level, relationships between achievement goals and affect were moderated by students’ emotion perception ability. These findings highlight the importance of emotion abilities and their role in motivational processes for class-level outcomes.     

优化地理课堂教学 实施素质教育

改变过去老的课堂教学模式,充分发挥学生的主体作用,激发学生学习地理的兴趣,把机械记忆转变为灵活有趣的多形式记忆,从而丰富学生的地理知识和提高各方面的综合素质。     

新课程标准下初三数学复习课教学探讨

随着新课程改革的纵深推进,中考中考察学生数学能力和联系学生实际情况的题目越来越多,传统的复习方法已经不能适应当下的数学中考.针对新教材,在复习中注重知识结构的建立,增强知识应用能力的培养,多采用变式训练,既能提高学生复习的兴趣,又能培养学生的探究能力和创新能力,往往能收到事半功倍的效果.     

02级英语本科新生情况的调查和分析

本从教育统计学和教育测量学的角度，对02级英语本科新生的情况进行了调查和分析，从中找出学生在入学阶段时的学习动机、学习志向和专业知识结构方面所存在的实际情况和问题，并提出解决问题的的建议和措施。     

中学优生的时间管理倾向与成就动机的相关研究

本研究探讨时间管理倾向与成就动机之间的关系。对四川成都市两所中学的175名中学优生的问卷调查研究发现：（1）中学优生的时间管理倾向各维度对追求成功动机存在着显著的正相关，与避免失败动机存在显著的负相关（时间监控观除外），（2）中学优生的时间管理倾向对成就动机具有显著的预测作用，表明时间管理倾向可能是影响学生成就动机的一个重要因素；（3）中学优生在时间管理倾向与成就动机上具有显著的年级差异，研究表明初二可能是培养时间管理倾向的关键时期。     

加强情感教育提高"学困生"的数学成绩

随着素质教育思想的提出和实践，“学困生”问题已逐渐成为教育界关注的焦点，如何提高“学困生”的数学水平，已成为数学教师的一个带有挑战性的问题，数学教学中的情感教育是促进“学困生”转化的一项重要策略。