A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students

A conceptual framework for assessing student motivation and self-regulated learning in the college classroom is presented. The framework is based on a self-regulatory (SRL) perspective on student motivation and learning in contrast to a student approaches to learning (SAL) perspective. The differences between SRL and SAL approaches are discussed, as are the implications of the SRL conceptual framework for developing instruments to assess college student motivation and learning. The conceptual framework may be useful in guiding future research on college student motivation and learning.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44454/1/10648_2004_Article_NY00000604.pd

Intraindividual Differences in Motivation and Cognition in Students With and Without Learning Disabilities

The present study examines several cognitive and motivational variables that distinguish children with learning disabilities (n = 19) from children without learning disabilities (n = 20). The total sample included 30 males and 9 females and was composed of white, fifth-grade students from a middle-class community in the Midwest. Results showed that although the students with learning disabilities displayed lower levels of metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension, they did not differ from the students without learning disabilities on self-efficacy, intrinsic orientation, or anxiety. In addition, they did not show any signs of learned helplessness, although they did tend to attribute success and failure to external causes more often than the students without learning disabilities. Using a cluster analysis that grouped individuals, we found that differences in the motivational and cognitive variables cut across a priori categories of children with and without learning disabilities. Three clusters were formed: one with high comprehension, motivation, and metacognition (mostly children without learning disabilities); one with low levels of comprehension and metacognition but high intrinsic motivation (all children with learning disabilities); and one with low intrinsic motivation but average comprehension, metacognition, and attributional style (approximately equal numbers of children with and without learning disabilities). Implications for diagnosis and intervention for students with learning disabilities are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68859/2/10.1177_002221949402700603.pd

Understanding Interference and Inhibition Processes from a Motivational and Self-Regulated Learning Perspective: Comments on Dempster and Corkill

Interference and inhibition processes as discussed by Dempster and Corkill (1999) are useful on two levels: first, metaphorically in terms of general themes for educational psychology, and, second, in terms of psychological mechanisms for understanding learning. At the same time, there are a number of issues that must be addressed in future theory and research before interference and inhibition processes can be accorded a primary explanatory role in models of learning, including the operation and sequencing of interference and inhibition processes in relation to other cognitive, motivational, and self-regulation processes; the definition and construction of the relevant–irrelevant information dimension; the role of interference and inhibition in the active selection of goals, strategies, and behavior; the stability and trait-like nature of interference and inhibition; the range of generality and applicability of interference and inhibition in relation to all other aspects of learning and behavior; and the utility and power of interference and inhibition as explanatory constructs.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44448/1/10648_2004_Article_413633.pd

Skill and will: the role of motivation and cognition in the learning of college chemistry.

This study investigated how students' level of motivation and use of specific cognitive and self-regulatory strategies changed over time, and how these motivational and cognitive components in turn predicted students' course performance in chemistry. Participants were 458 students enrolled in introductory college chemistry classes. Participants' motivation and strategy use were assessed at three time points over the course of one semester using self-report instruments. Results showed an overall decline in students' motivational levels over time. There was also a decline in students' use of rehearsal and elaboration strategies over time; students' use of organizational and self-regulatory strategies increased over time. These trends, however, were found to vary by students' achievement levels. In terms of the relations of motivation and cognition to achievement, the motivational components of self-efficacy and task value were found to be the best predictors of final course performance even after controlling for prior achievement. Introduction Why do some students excel academically while other students struggle to pass a class? What drives some students to actually learn and appreciate the course material? Why do some students study and others do not? In short, what are the determinants of academic success? Indeed, the question is straightforward. The answer, however, is far from simple. In the domain of science, from the research on science instruction and schooling practices to the research on conceptual change, investigators have proffered numerous explanations to this exact question. While we do not deny the importance of such accounts, it is our contention that such explanations nevertheless ignore one crucial aspect of the learning process; that is, motivation. Accordingly, the primary objective of this paper was to investigate the role of certain motivational components and their relation to students' learning and achievement outcomes in two college chemistry courses. Recently, researchers have taken a primarily social cognitive approach to the study of motivation, with an emphasis on the role of students' beliefs and strategies. Theorists have largely conceptualized motivation as a process, rather than a product. As such, it is believed that motivation can be discerned through students' reports of their beliefs as well as through behaviors such as choice of activities, level and quality of task engagement, persistence, and performance. Figure 1 displays our general model of achievement motivation and learning that forms the basis of this study. This model proposes that certain personal characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and prior knowledge, along with classroom contextual factors, help to shape how an individual approaches, engages, and responds to an achievement task, which in turn influences students' level of cognitive processing and, ultimately, outcomes such as choice, effort, persistence, and academic achievement. In line with the social cognitive perspective of motivation, this model also assumes that the relationships between the various components are reciprocal and, thus, can mutually influence one another. For example, researchers have demonstrated in numerous studies how one's prior academic successes and failures can influence future levels of engagement and motivation For the purposes of this study, we will focus on only three of the components of the model: motivational processes, cognitive processes, and outcomes. In terms of motivational processes, we are concerned with four motivational components. The first is self-efficacy, which can be defined as students' judgments of their capabilities to perform a task, as well as their beliefs about their agency in the course. Generally, researchers have shown that it is more adaptive to have higher efficacy beliefs. Students who believe that they are capable of adequately completing a task and have more confidence in their ability to do so typically display the highest levels of academic achievement, and also engage in academic behaviors that promote learning The second motivational component is task value beliefs, or students' beliefs about the utility and importance of a course. Again, it is believed that having higher task value beliefs is favorable; typically, researchers have demonstrated positive relations of task value beliefs to deeper levels of cognitive processing and performance Goal orientation represents the third motivational component in our model. Briefly, goal orientation can be defined as individuals' purposes when approaching, engaging in, and responding to achievement situations. Goal theorists commonly identify two primary achievement goals -mastery and performance goals -as being important determinants of students' motivation and performance. Endorsement of a mastery goal, or the goal to develop competence and task mastery, has been found to be positively related to various learning and motivational indices. In contrast, adoption of a performance goal, or the goal to validate one's competence in relation to others, is generally thought to have a negative effect on students' achievement motivation and academic performance The last motivational component is affect. Specifically, in this study we define affect in terms of interest and anxiety. Interest, defined as personal interest in course material or general liking of subject matter, has been linked with deeper cognitive processing as well as higher levels of achievement In terms of cognitive processes, we were mainly concerned with students' selfreported use of specific cognitive and self-regulatory strategies. Strategies can be divided into two main categories: superficial strategies that only require surfacelevel processing, and those strategies that require more deeper processing of course material. Generally, researchers have shown that it is more adaptive to use deeper processing strategies, in terms of long-term retrieval of information Given this model of motivation and cognition, we focused on the following research questions. First, how does motivation change in chemistry over the course of one semester? Second, how does strategy use change in chemistry? Third, how do the motivational and cognitive components predict performance in chemistry? Given previous research on the decline of motivation and engagement over the course of schooling Methods Participants Participants were 458 college students (243 female, 215 male) enrolled in two introductory chemistry courses at a large Midwestern university in the USA. The majority of these students were freshmen or sophomores. In terms of ethnicity, approximately 75% of these students identified themselves as 'Caucasian/White', 9% as 'Asian/Asian-American', 3% as 'African-American', and 1% as 'Hispanic'. Procedure Over the course of the semester, participants were asked to complete three surveys, which were administered at approximately 5 weeks, 10 weeks, and 15 weeks into the semester. All surveys were administered individually to participants during lectures, and took about 15-20 minutes to complete. The first questionnaire consisted primarily of demographic and other background-related questions (e.g. gender, ethnicity, SAT-mathematics score), in addition to items assessing students' self-efficacy and task value beliefs. The second and third questionnaires assessed participants' goal orientations, self-efficacy and task value beliefs, interest, anxiety, as well as their use of various cognitive and selfregulatory strategies. SKILL AND WILL 5 Measures Motivational measures for this study included self-efficacy (seven items regarding perceptions of one's ability to learn the course material; alpha values over three waves = 0.92-0.93), task value (five items concerning the importance and/or utility of the course in general; alpha values over three waves = 0.85-0.88), mastery goal orientation (six items regarding a goal of learning and understanding the course content; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.84-0.86), performance goal orientation (10 items concerning an approach performance goal of trying to do better than or outperform other students in the course; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.94), interest (five items concerning personal enjoyment and liking of the course; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.84-0.85), and anxiety (five items including both emotionality and worry components of anxiety; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.88). Cognitive measures included rehearsal (five items regarding surface-level processing/memorization of course material; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.72-0.73), organization (seven items concerning deeper processing of course material through the use of charts, diagrams, and other organizational tables; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.83-0.85), elaboration (six items concerning deeper processing of content by relating new ideas in course to other preexisting schemas or concepts; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.76-0.79), and metacognitive self-regulation (10 items regarding the planning, monitoring, and control of one's cognition and understanding of course material; alpha values for waves 2 and 3 = 0.77). With the exception of the interest scale, which was adapted from Elliot and Church's (1997) intrinsic motivation scale, all of the motivational measures were adapted from the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey (PALS) as well as the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The cognitive measures were drawn solely from the MSLQ. Both the PALS and MSLQ are self-report questionnaires that have been have been validated on numerous samples, from elementary school students to college students Finally, students' grades were collected at the end of the semester as a measure of participants' course performance. Students' grades in both courses were calculated based a point system, thus eliminating the need to standardize test scores across the two courses. Students' final course grade was determined by summing their one quiz score, three examination grades, and their final examination grade, for a maximum of 600 points in both courses. In addition, students' SAT-mathematics scores were used as a measure of prior achievement. The examinations consisted of both open-ended and close-ended questions. Open-ended questions included short case studies drawn from pharmaceutical chemistry or materials science that required students to represent their understanding of the chemical phenomenon in multiple ways; for example, through numbers, words, pictures, and graphs. Close-ended questions were typically of multiple-choice format, and emphasized a range of recognition and reasoning skills. Results Research question 1: how does motivation change in chemistry? To answer our first research question, repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAS) were conducted on all of the motivational measures. the means and standard deviations for self-efficacy, task value, the two goal orientation scales, and the two affect measures. In general, students' levels of motivation decreased over time. More specifically, there was a decline in students' level of self-efficacy (F(2,443) = 15.10, p < 0.001). Task value, too, declined over the course of the semester (F(2, 443) = 91.40, p < 0.001), as did students' endorsement of performance goals (F(1, 440) = 11.662, p < 0.001). There were no significant differences in students' reports of their mastery goals, interest, and anxiety over time. Research question 2: how does strategy use change over time? Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations of students' cognitive strategy use at the two time points. Over the course of the semester, there was a significant decline in students' reported use of rehearsal strategies (F(1,452) = 77.51, p < 0.001) and elaborative strategies (F(1, 451) = 180.77, p < 0.001), while students' use of organizational (F(1, 449) = 251.92, p < 0.001) and metacognitive strategies (F(1,405) = 18.01, p < 0.001) increased from time 2 to time 3

Non-restricted Access to Model Solutions : A Good Idea?

In this article, we report an experiment where students in an introductory programming course were given the opportunity to view model solutions to programming assignments whenever they wished, without the need to complete the assignments beforehand or to wait for the deadline to pass. Our experiment was motivated by the observation that some students may spend hours stuck with an assignment, leading to non-productive study time. At the same time, we considered the possibility of students using the sample solutions as worked examples, which could help students to improve the design of their own programs. Our experiment suggests that many of the students use the model solutions sensibly, indicating that they can control their own work. At the same time, a minority of students used the model solutions as a way to proceed in the course, leading to poor exam performance.Peer reviewe

Contextual differences in student motivation and self-regulated learning in mathematics, English, and social studies classrooms

Recent research on self-regulated learning has stressed the importance of both motivational and cognitive components of classroom learning. Much of this research has examined these components without consideration of potential contextual differences. Using a within-subject correlational design, the present study assessed mean level differences in students' task value, self-efficacy, test anxiety, cognitive strategy use, regulatory strategy use, and classroom academic performance by gender and across the subject areas of mathematics, social studies, and English. In addition, the relations among the motivational, strategy use, and performance measures were assessed using multivariate regressions. The participants were 545 seventh and eighth grade students (51% females) who responded to a self-report questionnaire. Results revealed mean level differences by subject area and gender in the motivation and cognitive strategy use variables, but not in regulatory strategy use or academic performance. In contrast, results indicated that the relations among these constructs was very similar across the three subject areas examined. Findings are discussed in terms of their importance for understanding the contextual nature of students' self-regulated learning.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43860/1/11251_2004_Article_136746.pd

Achievement goal orientation profiles and performance in a programming MOOC

It has been suggested that performance goals focused on appearing talented (appearance goals) and those focused on outperforming others (normative goals) have different consequences, for example, regarding performance. Accordingly, applying this distinction into appearance and normative goals alongside mastery goals, this study explores what kinds of achievement goal orientation profiles are identified among over 2000 students participating in an introductory programming MOOC. Using Two-Step cluster analysis, five distinct motivational profiles are identified. Course performance and demographics of students with different goal orientation profiles are mostly similar. Students with Combined Mastery and Performance Goals perform slightly better than students with Low Goals. The observations are largely in line with previous studies conducted in different contexts. The differentiation of appearance and normative performance goals seemed to yield meaningful motivational profiles, but further studies are needed to establish their relevance and investigate whether this information can be used to improve teaching.Peer reviewe

Avoiding Seeking Help in the Classroom: Who and Why?

Why do some students avoid seeking help in the classroom when they need it? When students do not seek the help they need, they put themselves at a disadvantage for learning. We discuss how students' personal motivational characteristics relate to their avoidance of help seeking. In particular, we discuss our work regarding perceived academic and social competence and achievement- and social-goal orientations. We also discuss how various dimensions of the classroom context relate to help avoidance. Specifically, we discuss rules and norms of classrooms as well as our work examining the achievement goal structure and social climate of classrooms. We conclude by discussing how new developments in achievement goal theory distinguishing between approach- and avoidance-goal orientations might add to psychologists' understanding of help avoidance. We also consider how students' strivings for autonomy and different aspects of the social climate might be incorporated into theories of students' help avoidance behavior.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44450/1/10648_2004_Article_292341.pd

The Prospect of the Russian Language in Georgia. Insights from the Educated Youth

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the status of the Russian language in the new-born Republics became a central issue. In the Southern Caucasus, all the Constitutions promulgated by the three Republics opted for ethnocentric language policies that accepted the titular language as the only State Language. However, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca remained crucial for international communication and everyday interaction. It followed that it continued to play an important role also in education. The present study focuses on Georgia, where a strong derussification policy has taken place in the last decades and aims at understanding to what extent the use of Russian among the young generations has contracted. In particular, we present an analysis conducted on data collected via (i) a survey for young people consisting of questions on their sociolinguistic background and a proficiency test in Russian, and (ii) semi-structured interviews for teachers of Russian and English as Foreign Languages on the research topics