Graduating as a ‘native speaker’: international students and English language proficiency in higher education

The current concern about low levels of English proficiency among international students who graduate from degree courses – that students’ English language skills are not being developed during their higher education experience – reflects negatively on the quality of Australian higher education and its graduates. More careful selection of students and increased use of English language testing are among the solutions put forward. These debates over English language proficiency tend to construct English language as a skill that can be applied in any context and ‘native‐speaker’‐levels of language ability as essential for employment. Within such a formulation international students can only ever be defined as in deficit. Drawing on socio‐cultural theories of language learning and academic literacy, alternative understandings of language proficiency in internationalized higher education are explored. Improved communication skills among graduates are likely to be achieved through a better understanding of issues beyond classroom instruction, such as barriers to social integration with native‐speakers, which reveal many international students unable to access adequate levels of language experience. Without wider perspectives on the debate over English language proficiency in higher education, the many benefits of having international students in higher education institutions are obscured by negative attitudes and unrealistic expectations.     

Longitudinal reciprocal effects between teachers’ judgments of students’ aptitude,students’ motivation,and grades in math

We investigated whether teachers’ judgments of students’ aptitude had reciprocal effects on students’ motivation and math grades. We expected that teachers’ judgments of students’ aptitude would predict students’ grades and motivation, and that teachers’ judgments would also be predicted by these two aspects. A sample of N = 519 elementary school students was investigated at four measurement occasions from the end of third until the end of fourth grade. Students reported their self-concepts and intrinsic task values in math. Teachers (N = 27) judged students’ aptitude in math and provided students’ math grades. Cross-lagged panel analyses revealed that students’ prior grades and prior self-concepts (but not intrinsic task values) had positive effects on teachers’ subsequent judgments of student aptitude. Also, teachers’ prior judgments of student aptitude predicted students’ subsequent grades but not motivation. The findings underscore the importance of teachers’ judgments for students’ achievement development and give insights into which students’ motivational variables influence teachers’ perceptions of students’ aptitude.     

A person-centered approach to examining high-school students’ motivation,engagement and academic performance

This study examined the relationship among motivation, engagement, and academic performance through a person-centered research approach. Participants included 10,527 students in grades 9 to 12 from twenty public high schools across the state of Ohio in the United States. Latent profile analysis revealed seven profiles of academic motivation including the amotivated, externally regulated, balanced demotivated, moderately motivated, identified/externally regulated, balanced motivated, and autonomously motivated profile groups. Students in these motivational profiles exhibited differences in cognitive and social engagement, as well as academic performance. In addition, multiple-group path analysis revealed different patterns of relationship among cognitive engagement, social engagement, and GPA, suggesting that motivational profile membership moderated the relationship between engagement and academic performance.     

The influence of motivation and adaptation on students’ subjective well-being,meaning in life and academic performance

High rates of mental illness among students and discontinuation with university studies are regularly reported. The current study sought to explore relationships between motivation, university adaptation and indicators of mental health and well-being and academic performance of 184 first-year university students (73% female, mean age?=?19.3 years). As expected, intrinsic motivation was associated with greater subjective well-being, meaning in life and academic performance. Extrinsic motivations showed few relationships to outcome variables, while amotivation was consistently associated with poor outcomes. Hierarchical regression revealed that after accounting for adjustment, motivational orientations provided a small, though significant, contribution to the prediction of outcomes. These results are discussed in relation to Self-Determination Theory, the eudaimonic/hedonic dichotomy and implications for career counselling and teaching.     

In the eyes of the beholder: students’ and teachers’ judgments of students’ motivation

This study was designed to examine the nature and accuracy of teachers’ judgments about students’ motivation related to mathematics. Seventeen fourth- through sixth-grade teachers and 100 of their students participated in this study. Teachers were asked to rate six target students’ motivation four times during the school year. At each of these times students also rated their own motivation. Teachers’ ratings were more stable over time and across mathematics topics and were less differentiated across motivation dimensions than were students’ ratings. The findings suggest that teachers need to pay careful attention to evidence related to children's motivation that might contradict their perceptions and therefore support more effective interventions.     

Tutors’ influence on distance language students’ learning motivation: voices from learners and tutors

Teachers’ influence on students’ learning motivation is a well-researched topic. Nevertheless, the majority of such studies are situated in the conventional learning context despite the rapid growth of distance language learning. This study set out to investigate tutors’ influence on students’ learning motivation in the Chinese distance language learning context. It attempted to gain a balanced picture of the issue under study by taking both student and tutor views into account. Findings from this study indicate that teaching competence, personal characteristics, subject matter expertise, and tutor–student relationship were four tutor-related factors which affected students’ learning motivation, reinforcing results of previous studies. Nevertheless, mismatches were found between students and tutors in relation to the influence of particular aspects of teaching competence, personal characteristics, and subject matter expertise. Implications from the study are considered in this article.     

Temporal stability of teachers’ judgment accuracy of students’ motivation,emotion, and achievement

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Numerous studies have focused on the significance and consequences of teacher judgment; the development of teachers’ judgment accuracy over time,...     

Teachers’ estimates of their students’ motivation and engagement: being in synch with students

Being aware of, monitoring and responding constructively to students’ signals of motivation and to students’ signals of engagement represent two important teaching skills. We hypothesised, however, that teachers would better estimate their students’ engagement than they would estimate their students’ motivation. To test this hypothesis, Korean high-school teachers rated three aspects of motivation and four aspects of engagement for each student in their class, while students completed questionnaires to provide referent self-reports of these same aspects of their motivation and engagement. Multi-level analyses showed that, after statistically controlling for the potentially confounding information of student achievement, teachers’ engagement estimates corresponded significantly to their students’ self-reports while their motivation estimate did not. These findings validate teachers’ skill in inferring their students’ classroom engagement and lead to the recommendation that teachers monitor classroom engagement to be in synch with their students during instruction.     

The effects of parental involvement on students’ academic self‐efficacy,engagement and intrinsic motivation

This research examined whether various dimensions of parental involvement predicted 10th‐grade students’ motivation (engagement, self‐efficacy towards maths and English, intrinsic motivation towards maths and English) using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS 2002). Results showed that both parents’ educational aspiration for their children and school‐initiated contact with parents on benign school issues had strong positive effects on all five motivational outcomes. On the contrary, parent–school contact concerning students’ school problems was negatively related to all five motivational outcomes investigated in the study. Additionally, parental advising positively predicted students’ academic self‐efficacy in English as well as intrinsic motivation towards English, and family rules for watching television were positively linked to students’ engagement and intrinsic motivation towards both English and maths.     

Growth mindset and reading proficiency of ESL learners: examining the role of students’ socioeconomic status using PISA 2018 Philippine data

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence can be increased with effort, has been shown to be positively associated with improved learning...     

Stability,change, and implications of students’ motivation profiles: A latent transition analysis

This study examines profiles of University students defined based on the types of behavioral regulation proposed by self-determination theory (SDT), as well as the within-person and within-sample stability in these academic motivation profiles across a two-month period. This study also documents the implications of these profiles for students’ engagement, disengagement, and achievement, and investigates the role of self-oriented perfectionism in predicting profile membership. A sample of 504 first-year undergraduates completed all measures twice across a two-month period. Latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis revealed six distinct motivation profiles, which proved identical across measurement points. Membership into the Autonomous, Strongly Motivated, Poorly Motivated, and Controlled profiles was very stable over time, while membership into the Moderately Autonomous and Moderately Unmotivated profiles was moderately stable. Self-oriented perfectionism predicted a higher likelihood of membership into the Autonomous and Strongly Motivated profiles, and a lower likelihood of membership into the Controlled profile. The Autonomous, Strongly Motivated, and Moderately Autonomous profiles were associated with the most positive outcomes, while the Poorly Motivated and Controlled profiles were associated with the most negative outcomes. Of particular interest, the combination of high autonomous motivation and high controlled motivation (Strongly Motivated profile) was associated with positive outcomes, which showed that autonomous motivation was able to buffer even high levels of controlled motivation.     

Mathematics teacher educator noticing: examining interpretations and evidence of students’ thinking

Noticing is a skill that is not overtly observable yet is consequential to effective mathematics instruction. Researchers have found that prospective and practicing teachers can learn to notice, but little focus has been given to those who teach teachers to notice. The purpose of the study was to characterize mathematics teacher educators’ noticing and their ability to interpret students’ thinking and connect interpretations to evidence. Participants in the study included 16 mathematics teacher educators who took part in a course designed to support noticing. Results indicate the mathematics teacher educators noticed at varying degrees and improved their noticing and incidence of connections between interpretations and evidence. Findings indicated that 19% of participants had no shift in their noticing because they were at the highest level of noticing to begin with (Robust with Strong Evidence), which was considered advanced noticing. Twenty-five percent of the participants did not shift in their noticing at all and remained at Limited, which is considered an intermediate level of noticing. The remaining 56% of the participants improved their noticing. The results of the study reveal that at the end of the course a majority of the participants were able to connect interpretations with evidence. These findings are important because they describe mathematics teacher educators’ interpretations and evidence as they notice.

     

Beneficial effects of self-affirmation on motivation and performance reduced in students hungry for others’ approval

Researchers have suggested that the self-affirmation intervention may motivate students to approach a challenging task and improve their performance. However, we posited that self-affirmation may not be beneficial for students whose self-esteem is based more on others’ approval (i.e., having high others’ approval contingencies of self-worth; OACSW). This is because the main motive for undertaking a challenging task among high OACSW students may be to obtain others’ approval and increase self-esteem. Being self-affirmed may increase high OACSW students’ sense of self-integrity, satisfying this motive, and thus cause them to perceive a lower value in undertaking the task. Consequently, high OACSW students would be less inclined to undertake the task and would not perform more favorably on it after being self-affirmed. In support of this hypothesis, the results of Experiment 1 (value affirmation) and Experiment 2 (attribute affirmation) showed that for high school students who did not receive self-affirmation, OACSW tended to be positively associated with their tendencies to confront a challenging task and their performance. However, for self-affirmed participants, the positive relationships between OACSW and both their tendencies to confront the task and performance flattened, and even went negative, mainly through a reduction of perceived value in confronting the task. Potential underlying mechanisms and implications are discussed.     

A pilot study examining the impact of collaborative mind mapping strategy in a flipped classroom: learning achievement,self-efficacy,motivation, and students’ acceptance

Educational technology research and development - Appropriate collaborative learning support is necessary for group learning in a flipped classroom setting, especially in the out-of-class learning...     

The relationship between second language college students’ perceptions of online feedback on draft-writing and academic procrastination

Reading and Writing - Though essay writing is an essential part of postsecondary education, it can be challenging for second language learners, who are required to organize ideas coherently in a...     

The effects of college students’ positive thinking,learning motivation and self-regulation through a self-reflection intervention in Taiwan

This quasi-experimental study examined the effects of a self-reflection intervention on college (college in this article refers to university-level education) students’ positive thinking, learning motivation and self-regulation in Taiwan. One hundred and two college students were selected to participate in an 18-week intervention forming the experimental group (EG) which emphasized providing main lecture, role-play, self-reflection activity, group discussion and group work. Another 179 college students from two other courses were selected as a comparison group. This study showed that supportive, resourced discussion with peers and instructor, self-reflection activities and assignment as a facilitative agent improved the EG students’ positive thinking, learning motivation and self-regulation. In addition, three structural equation models revealed that positive thinking had a strong and direct relation to Taiwanese college students’ pretest learning motivation (β?=?.85) and self-regulation (β?=?.77); learning motivation had a strong and direct relation to students’ pretest positive thinking (β?=?.86) and self-regulation (β?=?.81); and self-regulation had a strong and direct relation to students’ pretest positive thinking (β?=?.83) and learning motivation (β?=?.86). Instructional implications and research recommendations are discussed.     

Leadership and students’ academic success: mediating effects of self-efficacy and self-determination

When exploring the effects of leadership on students, most studies have focused on either how leadership affects the students’ academic outcomes or how it contributes to their personal development. This study merged both approaches and aimed to measure the mediating effects of self-efficacy and self-determination among leadership, students’ intentions to persist and GPA. A Structural Equation Analysis was applied to a data-set of 1009 students from 39 countries to examine these relationships. The results showed a full mediating effect of academic self-efficacy between leadership and students’ intentions to persist and between leadership and GPA, and revealed a full mediating effect of self-determination through autonomy and relatedness constructs between leadership and intention to persist. This result implies that even though leadership does not directly affect students’ academic outcomes, it enhances their confidence and motivation, which provides them with the inner drive to aim high, persevere and achieve their goals. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed.     

One size does not fit all: multi-group analysis of international students’ cross-cultural adaptation using MICOM

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to investigate the discrepancies that international students’ geographical region could create on the relationships of adjustment attitude, attachment attitude, and intention after graduation with psychological and sociocultural adaptations. As such, multi-group analysis was performed using partial least squares structural equation modelling to explore whether international students’ geographical place of origin (i.e. Asia, Middle East, and Africa) could play an important role in creating differences among the three groups of international students. To ensure that the measurement operations yield measures of the same attribute across the three groups of respondents, a new approach for establishing measurement invariance in composite models was applied in SmartPLS. The data were randomly collected from 1186 international students enrolled in a Master or Doctoral programme in top six public universities in Malaysia. Findings confirmed the existence of full measurement invariance across the three models in this study. The results also revealed that there are some similarities and differences among the Asian, Middle Eastern, and African models providing further understanding on each group's cross-cultural adaptation. Practical and empirical implications of the study are discussed.     

Correction to: The effects of distant professional development model on second grade teachers’ instruction and students’ quality of procedural papers

Reading and Writing - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10141-w     

The effects of teacher-introduced multimodal representations and discourse on students’ task engagement and scientific language during cooperative,inquiry-based science

The study sought to determine the effects of teacher-introduced multimodal representations and discourse on students’ task engagement and scientific language during cooperative, inquiry-based science. The study involved eight Year 6 teachers in two conditions (four very effective teachers and four effective teachers) who taught two units of inquiry-based science across two school terms. The results show that the very effective teachers spent significantly more time engaged in using embodied representations to illustrate points or communicate information. They also spent significantly more time engaged in interrogating students’ understandings and scaffolding and challenging their thinking than the effective teachers. In turn, the students in the very effective teachers’ classes spent significantly more time on-task and used significantly more relevant basic and scientific language to explain the phenomena they were investigating than their peers in the effective teachers’ classes. These are behaviours and language that are associated with successful learning in science.