Passion and motivation for studying: predicting academic engagement and burnout in university students

Research on the dualistic model of passion has investigated harmonious and obsessive passion in many domains. However, few studies have investigated passion for studying and the role passion for studying plays in student engagement and well‐being. The present study investigated the relationships between harmonious and obsessive passion for studying and academic engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and burnout (exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy) in 105 university students, controlling for the effects of autonomous and controlled motivation. Both harmonious and obsessive passion explained variance in academic engagement and burnout beyond autonomous and controlled motivation: harmonious passion predicted higher dedication and lower cynicism, obsessive passion predicted higher absorption, and both harmonious and obsessive passion predicted higher vigour and lower inefficacy. The findings suggest that passion for studying explains individual differences in students’ academic engagement and burnout beyond autonomous and controlled motivation and thus deserves more attention from educational psychology.     

Responding to crises in transnational education: new challenges for higher education

This paper is based on a case study of an Australian university involved in the delivery of transnational programs in an educational environment that has been increasingly characterized by commercial considerations. The researchers conducted focus group interviews with both general and academic staff to ascertain the personal, academic and administrative issues affecting the delivery of educational programs in Asia that arose as a result of one particular crisis in 2003: the SARS epidemic. The findings indicate that both administrative and academic staff felt personally and professionally challenged by the complexity of the issues involved in interrupting the pattern of transnational teaching. Potentially conflicting rationales emerged through the focus group discussions, with administrative staff expressing concern with maintaining services, while lecturers articulated a preoccupation with the safeguarding of assessment standards.