Peer effects,motivation, and learning

This paper confirms the existence of peer effects in a learning process with data from an experiment. The experimental setting offers an insight into the mechanisms of peer interaction and provides complementary information to empirical studies using survey or administrative data. The results show that a partner has a motivational effect even before the actual cooperation takes place. The evidence for optimal group composition is not robust. Some of the “better” students improve the performance of their partner but they induce lower motivation.     

Enhancing achievement motivation and performance in college students: An attributional retraining perspective

Academic performance in higher education ultimately involves a complex interplay of student attributes and the educational environment. Although instruction is regarded as the major environmental factor affecting scholastic success, other factors can become more important when teaching does not produce the desired results. Attributional retraining is one alternative that shows considerable promise for enhancing students' motivation and achievement striving by changing how students think about their successes and failures. This paper reviews attributional retraining studies published since 1985 having a higher education focus. Their conceptual and methodological strengths and weaknesses are discussed in relation to Weiner's attribution theory. Within this context, attributional retraining is presented as a potentially viable and important intervention for improving college students' academic development, especially those students deemed to be at risk. In particular, attributional retraining is considered as an adjunct to, and possible aspect of, effective teaching.Support for this research was provided to Raymond P. Perry by Franz E. Weinert, Max Planck Institute, Munich, and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-91-1296). The junior authors contributed equally to the article and are listed alphabetically.     

关于学习不良学生学习动机的研究综述

文章首先探讨了学习不良概念界定的发展,并对"学习不良"这一概念作出界定.然后对近年来关于学习不良学生学习动机的国内外相关研究做出总体介绍,最后指出了当前国内研究的不足之处以及研究展望.     

Interest,inferences, and learning from texts

Topic interest and learning from texts have been found to be positively associated with each other. However, the reason for this positive association is not well understood. The purpose of this study is to examine a cognitive process, inference generation, that could explain the positive association between interest and learning from texts. In Study 1, sixty undergraduate students participated by reading two science texts, which differed in coherence levels, silently. The results replicated previous findings that topic interest is positively associated with recall and accurate answers to comprehension questions for both texts. In Study 2, sixty-nine undergraduate students participated by reading the same two science texts while thinking aloud. The results indicated that topic interest was positively associated with inference generation while reading for the more coherently-written text. Subsequent analyses indicated inference generation partly explained the positive association between topic interest and accurate answers to comprehension questions for the more coherently-written text. The findings from Study 2 were independent of the effects of reading comprehension skill. Theoretical implications of the findings, in regard to standards of coherence and depth of processing while reading, are discussed.     

Informal learning: Student achievement and motivation in science through museum-based learning

This study examined changes in student motivation and achievement in science during a visit to a university children’s science museum. The study was based on the pretest–posttest control comparison group design with four treatment groups: control, exhibit, lesson and exhibit/lesson. The sample consisted of 228 sixth-grade students from a Louisiana public school who were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental groups. Pretest, posttest and delayed posttest measures of intrinsic motivation and achievement in science were obtained using the Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory and an achievement test written to measure areas of science incorporated in the museum exhibits. The data were analysed using a one-way ANOVA, dependent t tests and Pearson r. Significant differences were found within groups for (1) the lesson group in motivation and (2) the exhibit group in achievement from pretest to posttest and from posttest to delayed posttest. A significant relationship between level of motivation and science achievement was revealed for the exhibit group on the delayed posttest. There were no other significant findings to support that the treatment led to any long-term effects on motivation or achievement within any of the four experimental groups.     

激发学习内驱力,提高英语课堂教学效益

本文针对学生英语学习缺乏内驱力的问题,分析了如何激发学生的内驱力,提高英语课堂的教学效果.     

Perceived research environment,motivation, and academic interest in research: a social-cognitive perspective

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Using social-cognitive career theory as a framework, we investigated whether research self-efficacy and outcome expectations mediated...     

Dewey,democracy, and interdisciplinary learning: a Scottish perspective

Interest in progressive education ideas has often been accompanied by advocacy for greater use of interdisciplinary and holistic learning approaches, as these are considered beneficial in conceptual, curriculum, and pedagogical terms. The paper reviews the possibilities for progress on this basis and contextualises the paper around three concurrent watershed moments in Scottish education: the end of the five-year programme implementation phase of a Curriculum for Excellence; the half-century anniversary of comprehensive schooling (1965–2015); and the centennial anniversary of the publication of Democracy in Education by John Dewey. Following a brief outlining of the Scottish policy context, the paper analyses the influence of Dewey on conceptions of curriculum integration and interdisciplinary learning and their connections with curriculum planning, effective pedagogical practices, and whole school reforms. Analysis describes the areas of conceptual clarity required and reviews how exactly versions of interdisciplinary learning might operate in practice. It is argued that the learner-led ideals championed by Dewey can still provide guidance and traction to help ensure that policy and practice gains are more than modest and variable. However, progress is likely to be greatest if school organisational changes accompany alterations to the curriculum and pedagogical culture in schools.     

Measuring styles of learning and motivation

The theoretical basis, the development and the use of an inventory designed to measure styles of learning and motivation are described. On the basis of previous research, items within the inventory were located on 20 sub-scales. The ten motivation sub-scales were derived from a theory of school motivation which was based on extensive interview and inventory work carried out in Hungary with children, their parents and teachers. The ten scales describing styles of learning were derived from concepts describing learning approaches and styles which emerged from interviews and experimental research with students in British and Swedish higher education. Versions were prepared in both English and Hungarian and given to samples of 614 British and 579 Hungarian pupils aged between 13 and 17 years. A remarkably similar factor structure was obtained in each sample. An analysis of mean scores indicated distinctive differences both between boys and girls, and between British and Hungarian pupils. Cluster analysis was used to investigate the possible existence of styles which combined both approaches to learning and aspects of school motivation. The potentiality of the inventory for use in conjunction with study skills courses is discussed.     

浅谈英语学习动机与方法

所谓外语学习的外在动力,是指学习外语的原因存在于学习活动本身之外,是为了得到什么奖赏或避免挨批才学习外语的。本文从教师、学习目的、学习方法与习惯、信心、教材、学习环境等因素对学生展开调查,旨在探讨大学英语学习困难生降低语言学习动机的因素,并期望能结合实际提出改进现状,提高英语教学及学习效率的实用的措施。     

Student intrinsic motivation,science teaching practices and student learning

Conclusion This paper has been concerned with the application of basic understandings about intrinsic motivation and curiosity behaviour to the teaching of science, and in particular senior high school biology. The important role of student knowledge in the generation, maintenance and resolution of cognitive conflict is congruent with the renewed interest in studying students' everyday knowledge of curriculum content. However the study of classroom teaching processes in terms of their facilitation of intrinsic motivation is not common. Yet the data collected in this study demonstrates the importance of closely examining the implementation of courses such as the Web of Life, if the arousal of intrinsic motivation is an intended student outcome. Both interview and observational data indicated that the teaching styles adopted by teachers in this study were not likely to engender curiosity amongst students. Perhaps this should be expected. The use of a wide range of reference materials to investigate problems that arise in the classroom, the encouragement of students to do additional work on a topic if they are particularly interested, and a willingness on the part of the teacher to allow students sufficient time to formulate their own solutions to problems are classroom processes which necessitate a greater flexibility in curriculum presentation than can be often tolerated by teacher and school management. Such processes may be incompatible with organisational properties of the school and the pressures often placed upon students to perform to a high standard on rigidly defined examinations.     

Achievement motivation and gifted students: A social cognitive perspective

The purpose of this article is to provide an illustrative review of recent research on achievement motivation and gifted students from a social cognitive perspective. The review discusses several constructs that have been a focus of motivation research: perceived competence and self-efficacy, attributions, goal orientations, and intrinsic motivation. For each construct, motivational research from the general motivation literature and from the field of gifted and talented studies are critiqued and compared. The review suggests that a general social cognitive perspective is a useful theoretical framework for research on motivational processes involved in the intellectual and personal development of gifted and talented students and that a process-oriented model is superior to a static model for research on both giftedness and achievement motivation. Implications of the review for future research on motivation and talent development are discussed.     

Self-directed learning in MOOCs: exploring the relationships among motivation,self-monitoring,and self-management

Educational technology research and development - Given that massive open online learning courses (MOOCs) are considerably different from traditional classrooms in terms of roles and...     

Teacher expectation effects on need-supportive teaching,student motivation,and engagement: a self-determination perspective

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that teachers differentiate their behaviour based on their expectations of students. Self-determination theory (SDT) makes explicit how teacher behaviour relates to students’ motivation and engagement, namely, via need-supportive teaching. In the present study, we combined both research traditions and examined associations of teacher expectations with need-supportive teaching and thereby students’ motivation and engagement. Two-hundred-and-seventy-six secondary school students and their teachers (N?=?11) completed questionnaires. The results indicated that teacher expectations were moderately but positively associated with students’ intrinsic motivation and engagement, and negatively with amotivation. These relationships were fully mediated, although with small effect sizes, by need-supportive teaching. These findings highlight the value of combining research on teacher expectations and SDT, to gain further understanding of how teacher expectations may cause teachers to provide more need support to some students than to others, thereby affecting students’ motivation and engagement.     

Individual differences in an English learning achievement system: gaming flow experience,gender differences and learning motivation

Despite the growing interest in digital game-based learning (DGBL), there has been a lack of attention paid to the effects of individual differences, such as gaming flow experience and gender differences, in a reward-based achievement system. To this end, this study developed an achievement system with a reward mechanism to facilitate English learning. This study investigated how individuals’ gaming flow experience levels affected their levels of learning motivation, and whether any gender differences existed in gaming flow experience and learning motivation while engaging in the achievement system. The results showed that gaming flow experience significantly predicted learning motivation, whereby the students with high gaming flow experience were six times more likely to have high learning motivation than those with low gaming flow experience. Subsequent analysis showed that the female students had significantly higher gaming flow than the male students, but the male and female students showed similar learning motivation. Furthermore, the results indicated that the male students achieved more interactive rewards than the female students, but no significant differences were found in the male and female students’ achievement of other types of rewards. Based on these findings, the authors contribute to the literature by developing a framework which can be applied to support designers to accommodate individual differences in DGBL.     

Students motivation for adopting programming contests: Innovation-diffusion perspective

Within the context of Rogers theory of perceived attributes, authors propose a framework that can predict students’ motivation to adopt programming contest like ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). In this paper we investigate the attributes for adoption of programming contest in a social group comprising of (N?=?1245) undergraduate engineering students from the regional finals of the contest held in India over a period of 3 years. The results revealed that student motivations are strongly associated with attributes like relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, peer influence, perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness. Overall, students expressed positive attitude towards adopting programming contests as it helped improve their problem solving and programming skills and overall employability. Both gender was in agreement that joining and winning programming contests is a status symbol.