Perceptions and Practices of Stimulating Children’s Cognitive Development Among Moroccan Immigrant Mothers

We explored the perceptions of children’s cognitive development among Moroccan Arabic and Berber immigrant mothers who cannot read, who are less educated, middle educated or highly educated in the Netherlands. A series of in-depth interviews was conducted with 22 mothers with young children (mean age = 5 years and 6 months). Qualitative data analyses revealed five major themes that are of significant importance to these mothers: moral attitudes, social values and religiousness; conversation, reading and playing as stimulating activities; importance attached to education; parental expectations; attributions of school success. The parental perceptions about the cognitive development of young children differed according to their own educational level. Mothers who cannot read and mothers with less education emphasized the development of moral, social and religious values for strengthening the cultural identity of their children. This sense of identity would enable them to function within their own cultural group and help them to perform well at school. School success was attributed in large part to a combination of the efforts of the child and the school. Middle and highly educated mothers, on the other hand, valued scholastic development and attributed school success to their own efforts and to the kind of support the child received. The ethnic background of the parents, whether Arabic or Berber, did not make a difference in the perceptions

Dissolving the digital divide : Creating coherence in young people's social ecologies of learning and identity building

This chapter discusses current research on educational efforts to connect school learning with young people’s digital practices in- and out-of-school. Instead of focusing on divides between in-school and out-of-school learning or between the “digital generation” and other age groups, in this chapter we discuss what recent research says about the ways in which school can become a space in which young people’s digital practices can transformatively converge with schooling, and how this convergence is related to their learning and identity building. We begin our narrative reflection of current research by focusing on the myth of digital natives. Next, we will conceptualize recent efforts to researching and understanding young people’s engagement, learning and identity building across sites and contexts. We will then turn to illuminating some key rationales of current educational research on creating convergence in young people’s social ecologies via the use of digital technologies and media. We conclude our reflections by pointing out that although there are some promising findings on how digital technologies and media can create convergence in young people’s engagement and learning across sites and contexts, less research attention is given to young people’s personal sense-making and self-making mediated by their digital practices, and how formal education could build on those practices for academic, vocational and/or civic ends.Peer reviewe

In-lecture learning motivation predicts students’ motivation, intention, and behaviour for after-lecture learning: Examining the trans-contextual model across universities from UK, China, and Pakistan

This paper presents a cross-cultural examination of the trans-contextual model in University education setting. The purpose of the study was to test the effect of students’ perceived autonomy support and in-lecture learning motivation on motivation, intention, and behaviour with respect to after-lecture learning via the mediation of the social cognitive variables: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. University students from UK, China, and Pakistan completed the questionnaires of the study variables. Results revealed that in-lecture perceived autonomy support and autonomous motivation were positively associated with autonomous motivation and intention to engage in after-lecture learning activities via the mediation of the social cognitive variables in all samples. After controlling for the effect of past behaviour, relations between intention and behaviour were only observed in the Chinese sample. In conclusion, the trans-contextual model can be applied to University education, but cultural differences appear to moderate the predictive power of the model, particularly for the intention-behaviour relationship

The impact of school on EFL learning motivation: an Indonesian case study

There is much evidence that, in general, learners' motivation to study declines as they move through school and that the causes are both developmental and environmental. By contrast, the attitudinal basis of language learning motivation has been regarded as relatively stable, though recent empirical studies in various countries have also pointed toward a fall-off in interest and enthusiasm for foreign languages among pupils. This article reports on research into the motivation of Indonesian adolescents toward learning English over the first 20 months of junior high school. Using a mixed-method design, the study aimed to track changes in their reported motivation and learning activity and to identify internal and external factors which might be associated with the changes. It was found that the learners' initially very positive attitudes toward the language and expectations of success were maintained over the period, whereas their attitudes toward the experience of formal learning tended to deteriorate. Explanations for these outcomes are sought in the social context and, in particular, in how individuals view English as pertaining to their futures