An Empirical Study on the Students’ Motivation and Attitudes Who Take Esp Optional Courses

The learners’ motivation and attitude toward English for Specific Purposes(ESP) is always an influential element for the quality of ESP course.Teachers should at first get to know the learners’ motivation and attitude toward this course so as to teach the course well.Therefore,by means of questionnaire survey on the students’ motivation and attitudes who took accounting English in M University as their elective course during the next term in 2009,and through qualitative study,such as interviews,diary and classroom observation on the accounting English choosers in the next term in 2010,some conclusions are discovered that there are about 4 factors and 3 variables among the students’ motivations,and their attitudes toward this course is positive in general.Both accounting and English are their learning targets,and oral English and translation are their favors.The combination of blackboard-writing and multimedia technology is preferred than any of the other single teaching models.But the shortage of class hours and the lack of systematic arrangement also affect the students’ motivation and their learning efficiency.     

The Influence of Perceived Disgust on Students’ Motivation and Achievement

There are a wide range of student emotions in academic settings, but apart from emotions such as interest and well-being, disgust is a negative emotion which might be relevant in biology education, for instance, during dissection or when encountering living animals. This paper addresses the issue of situational disgust during a course at the university using living animals and prepared mounts. The course covers a wide range of organisms from protists (e.g. Paramecium) through invertebrates to vertebrates and uses many methods (e.g. microscopy, dissection, and behavioral observations) and specific content (anatomy, structure, and behavior). The dissection of the trout was rated as most disgusting, followed by working with living woodlice, living earthworms, and living snails. The least disgusting lessons were those dealing with microscopy, mammalian skulls, honeybee dance, and bird flight. Based on animals, macro-invertebrates were rated as most disgusting and mammals as least disgusting. Concerning methods, observing through a microscope was perceived as being least disgusting, followed by experiments without animals, then followed by experiments with living animals and, most disgusting, dissection. Disgust was correlated negatively with interest, well-being, and competence but positively with pressure and boredom. Thus, low disgust is related to high interest, well-being, and competence, while higher disgust is related to higher pressure and boredom. The results show a need for measuring situational disgust in addition to survey studies. They also suggest that perceived disgust negatively affects intrinsic motivation. This has implications for biology teaching, because carrying out dissections or experiencing living animals in the classroom may have a detrimental effect on motivation.     

The Effects of Multimedia Content Design Modalities on Students’ Motivation and Achievement in History

This study examined the effects of different multimedia design modalities on middle-school students’ motivation and achievement in history and also sought to determine whether an interaction effect on achievement occurs between students’ prior knowledge and the different multimedia design modalities. Two groups of eighth-grade students enrolled in a rural middle school in a southern state created multimedia artifacts using two design modalities: video content design and visual content design. Each group consisted of 21 students ranging in age from 13 to 14. Both groups completed a history lesson on state governors and created video content or visual content, respectively. The results showed that students earned significantly higher achievement test scores when they were involved in the visual content design modality. However, no differences were found in each of the four motivation sub-measures. Furthermore, there was no interaction effect between students’ prior knowledge levels and the different content design modalities.     

The Effects of Collaborative Care of Living Animals in Biology Lessons on Students’ Relatedness Toward Their Teacher Across Gender

Research in Science Education - The transition from elementary school to the upper grades can lead to ambiguous feelings toward the new, male teachers. This study investigated whether collaborative...     

A Case Study of Students’ Motivation in College Algebra Courses

This paper examines data from a larger study that focused upon students’ experiences and motivations in a college algebra course. The study revealed that students failed this course because of various factors and continued to view this course as a “gatekeeper” class. Through a stepwise multiple regression, the analysis of the ARCS instrument showed that Attention, Relevance, and Confidence were strong predictors of Satisfaction in the course.     

An Empirical Study of Students’ Sight Translation Practice

Most of the studies on sight translation are related to analyzing effort models.Some scholars have established effort models for interpreting activities.However,the majority of the research published in English was conducted between English and European languages.Experiments written in English on interpreting between English and Chinese are limited.The purpose of this research is to explore the problems that occurred in students’performance of sight translation with a view to improving students’performance and the training method.The results of the experiment show that ST skills are composed of two parts:linguistic capacity and delivery skills.The problems that occurred in the case study were presented as delivery problems.However,the reason for the problems was lack of linguistic transfer capacity.This study recommends that students should be trained both on linguistic capacity and delivery skills.     

The Effect of a Pedagogical STEAM Model on Students’ Project Competence and Learning Motivation

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The development of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Mathematics) curricula has emerged in the past decade. A pedagogical...     

The Generalizability of Students’ Interests in Biology Across Gender, Country and Religion

In order to bridge the existing gap between biology curricula and students’ interests in biology, a strategy for identifying students’ interest based on their questions and integrating them into the curriculum was developed. To characterize the level of generalizability of students’ science interests over 600 high school students from Portugal, Turkey, England and Israel, who chose biology as an advanced subject, their interest level was ranked in 36 questions that were originally raised by Israeli students. Results indicate that students from four different countries show interest in similar science questions. The most intriguing questions were the ones that dealt with human health and new developments in reproduction and genetics. Religious affiliation had the strongest effect on students’ interest level, followed by national affiliation and gender. The findings suggest that students’ interest in one context is relevant to the development of interest-based learning materials in a different context. However, despite these similarities, cultural and sociological differences need to be taken into account.     

Effects of a Value-Reappraisal Intervention on Statistics Students’ Motivation and Performance

The authors investigated the effects of an exploratory value-reappraisal intervention on students’ motivation and performance in an undergraduate introductory statistics course. They sampled 82 students from 2 instructors’ sections during both the fall and spring semesters. Students were randomly assigned within each section to either the Value-Reappraisal (VR) or Control condition (C). VR presented messages about the importance of statistics and guided students in exploring potential values of learning statistics. Results showed positive effects of VR on task value, endogenous instrumentality, and a choice-behavior measure of interest. The authors found VR to affect exam performance, but only for students who had a particular instructor. This research helps broaden literature on self-regulation and expectancy-value models of motivation by focusing on the regulation of value perceptions.     

College Students’ Psychological Needs and Intrinsic Motivation to Learn: An Examination of Self-Determination Theory

Over the last several decades, instructional communication scholars have studied and measured student motivation as an important learning outcome. Unfortunately, this research has lacked theoretical guidance and has treated student motivation as a construct that varies only in quantity, ignoring existing theory that suggests student motivation is best understood as a construct that differs in quality (i.e., intrinsic motivation). To create two new measures that incorporate theoretical explanations of student motivation, three studies (N = 1,067) were undertaken using self-determination theory (SDT) to operationalize students’ intrinsic motivation as a product of basic psychological need satisfaction. In the first two studies, the Student Psychological Needs Scale and the Intrinsic Motivation to Learn Scale were developed and validated. In the third study, parallel mediation analyses supported SDT’s prediction that the fulfillment of students’ psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, relatedness) would mediate the relationship between personalized education practices and intrinsic motivation to learn.     

Longitudinal Goal Patterns and Their Effects on Students’ Motivation in Running Programs

In this study the authors examined longitudinal achievement goal patterns and their effects on students’ motivation and performance from the 5th to 6th grade in physical education running programs. In their 5th and 6th grade, 412 participants completed questionnaires assessing their task and ego orientations, expectancy beliefs, task values, and intentions for future participation in running. They also completed a timed 1-mile run. Results revealed low task/low ego, low task/high ego, high task/low ego, and high task/high ego remained stable as goal patterns across the 5th and 6th grade. The majority of students moved to more motivationally adaptive goal patterns over time.     

Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Students’ Motivation and Self‐Regulation in Science Learning

Students’ motivational beliefs and self‐regulatory practices have been identified as instrumental in influencing the engagement of students in the learning process. An important aim of science education is to empower students by nurturing the belief that they can succeed in science learning and to cultivate the adaptive learning strategies required to help to bring about that success. This article reports the development and validation of an instrument to measure salient factors related to the motivation and self‐regulation of students in lower secondary science classrooms. The development of the instrument involved identifying key determinants of students’ motivation and self‐regulation in science learning based on theoretical and research underpinnings. Once the instrument was developed, a pilot study involving 52 students from two Grade 8 science classes was undertaken. Quantitative data were collected from 1,360 students in 78 classes across Grades 8, 9, and 10, in addition to in‐depth qualitative information gathered from 10 experienced science teachers and 12 Grade 8 students. Analyses of the data suggest that the survey has strong construct validity when used with lower secondary students. This survey could be practically valuable as a tool for gathering information that may guide classroom teachers in refocusing their teaching practices and help to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention programmes.     

The Study of ESP Teaching and Students’ Expectation of ESP Course

With the development of economic globalization,international communication and integration,English for Specific Purpose turned up and has enjoyed much popularity since recent years. In the contemporary society,ESP teaching becomes an increasing prominent teaching course. This paper will focus on the ESP teaching and learning,especially the students’ expectation of ESP course. At first,it will introduce the great importance and background of ESP teaching. Then,it will review the definition,categories and traits of ESP. In the end,it will mainly concern about students’ expectation and perception of ESP course.The main purpose of this paper is to bring up some constructive suggestions for ESP teaching and learning. It suggests that to achieve the goal of facilitating ESP teaching and learning effectively can be realized by understanding the characteristics of ESP teaching and learners’ learning style,choosing the suitable teaching materials,creating some specific fields of this study which is relevant practically,mapping out appropriate evaluation. As for students,they should set up clear goals for ESP learning,adopt such appropriate learning method as the self-construction way,and try the cooperative learning pattern. Besides,ESP teachers also play an important role in this process. They can achieve the success of ESP teaching through planning course design at advance including considering and understanding students’ expectation of ESP course,their characteristics,learning goals and appropriate teaching materials,which all contribute to positive ESP learning experience.     

Upper Secondary Students’ Understanding of the Use of Multiple Models in Biology Textbooks—The Importance of Conceptual Variation and Incommensurability

In this study we investigate students’ ability to discern conceptual variation and the use of multiple models in genetics when reading content-specific excerpts from biology textbooks. Using the history and philosophy of science as our reference, we were able to develop a research instrument allowing students themselves to investigate the occurrence of multiple models and conceptual variation in Swedish upper secondary textbooks. Two excerpts using different models of gene function were selected from authentic textbooks. Students were given the same questionnaire-instrument after reading the two texts, and the results were compared. In this way the students themselves made a classification of the texts which could then be compared with the researchers’ classification of the texts. Forty-one upper secondary students aged 18–19 participated in the study. Nine of the students also participated in semi-structured interviews. Students recognized the existence of multiple models in a general way, but had difficulty discerning the different models and the conceptual variation that occurs between them in the texts. Further they did not recognize the occurrence of incommensurability between multiple models. Students had difficulty in transforming their general knowledge of multiple models into an understanding of content specific models of gene function in the textbooks. These findings may have implications for students’ understanding of conceptual knowledge because research has established textbooks as one of the most influential aspects in the planning and execution of biology lessons, and teachers commonly assign reading passages to their students without further explanation.     

The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Reading Motivation and Activity

Parent support for reading is one of the many elements that may play a role in the development and sustainment of children’s reading motivation; to date, however, research has focused much more on the role that parents play in their preschool and primary-grade children’s reading than in their older children’s reading. Thus, this paper examines the findings and methodology of empirical studies concerning the ways and extent to which parent support for reading relates to the reading motivations and habits of students in the fourth through 12th grades. The review includes discussion of extant quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies, theoretical models from the reading domain applicable to the socialization of reading practices, and extensive recommendations for future research. The dual purpose of this review is to present a sketch of the role of parents’ in adolescents’ reading motivation based on extant work and to encourage research that will help develop this sketch into a fuller portrait.     

The Effects of Special Curricular Study of Mexican Culture on Anglo and Mexican-American Students’ Perceptions of Mexican-Americans

Anglo and Mexican-American students in six sixth-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to control or experimental conditions (four weeks of special curricular study of Mexican culture). The effect of the treatment on perceptions of MexicanAmericans was studied by having students respond anonymously to an attitude inventory. The posttest means were significantly lower than the pretest means for all groups, apparently as a consequence of greater honesty in responding. There were significant differences in the ethnic group means, but no sex difference. The length and intensity of the treatment were not sufficient to cause changes in the ethnic attitudes and stereotypes.