ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY AMONG DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES OF GOALPARA DISTRICT OF ASSAM

Achievement Motivation is a consistent striving force of an individual to achieve success to certain standard of excellence in competing situation. In this study an attempt was made to study the effect of achievement motivation on the academic achievement of the high school students of tribal and non tribal communities in relation to their sex and locale. For this purpose a sample of 200 students, studying in class IX of ten government high schools of Goalpara District of Assam was selected. They were administered the measures of Achievement Motivation Scale by Gopal Rao. ‘t’ test and co-efficient of correlation (r) was applied to study the significance of difference between means and significant relation between achievement motivation academic achievement respectively. It was found that there was no significant difference between tribal- non tribal and boy - girl students but urban students have shown high achievement motivation than the rural students. In case of relationship between achievement motivation and academic achievement  it was observed that there was no significant relation between achievement motivation and academic achievement of tribal, boy and rural  students but there was a significant relationship between the achievement motivation and academic achievement of non tribal, girl and urban students. In this modern age achievement is considered to be a key factor for personal and social progress. The whole system of education revolves round academic achievements of students in the school. Children do not find any interest in learning school subjects. The school learning of a child depends on various physiological, psychological, socio-cultural and economic factors. Individual differences result in diversity among students in their academic achievement and studies have shown general mental ability as a major factor in determining achievement (Patel, 1988 and Khader, 1992). But apart from the general mental ability other factors such as personality traits like interest, achievement –motivation  etc  are also the determinants of education. Motivation is always considered as a central factor in academic achievement. Achievement is a task oriented behaviour that allows the individual's performance to be evaluated according to some internally or externally imposed criterion that involves the individual in competing with others or with some standard of excellence. (Smith,1969). Achievement motivation is a primary condition to achieve something. It is a strong motive characterized by ambition, high level of energy, strong desire for independence. It is a stable learned characteristics in which satisfaction comes from striving for and achieving a level of excellence. Achievement Motivation is a drive to excel in learning tasks combined with capacity to experience tried in accomplishment, Eggen  Manchak, (1994). The concept of Achievement Motivation was first popularized by Murray (1938). Later David McClleland and Atkinson concentrated on the study of achievement motivation. People who strove for excellence in a field for the sake of achieving and not for some reward are considered to have a high need for achievement. This need has labeled as n-achievement for convenience. So the need for achievement or n-Ach was defined  as the desire or tendency to do things rapidly and to accomplish something difficult to master, manipulate, organize physical objects,  human beings or ideas. This is to do things rapidly and independently as possible to overcome obstacles and obtain a high standard to excel oneself to rival and surpass others and to increase self-regard by the successful exercise talents (Murray,1938). The theory of achievement motivation is concerned with the interaction of personality and the immediate environment as a contemporary determinant of aspiration, efforts and persistence when an individual expects that performance will be evaluated as success or failure in relation to some standard of excellence. McClelland (1966) has rightly said, if in a given country the students in the schools or universities have concern for excellence, that country will show a considerable amount of progress. So the progress of a country depends upon its youth /students and, to a great extent, depends upon their academic attainment.  Since Eysenek (1953), research works have been reported on human motivation or achievement motivation and its concomitant effect upon classroom learning. The prediction of relationship between academic achievement and achievement motivation has been the primary objective of many investigators. From those studies the findings on n-Ach and its relationship with academic achievement are available. Meheta (1969), Dutt and Subhramal (1971), Pathak (1974), Christian(1977), Nair (1984), Geetha (1985),  Busato et al.(2000), Panda and Jena(2000), Krishnamurty(2001), Browsand (2002), Kour (2004), Tseng(2004), Bansal et al. (2006), Tan et al.(2007), Umadevi (2009), Yusuf (2011) etc. have shown the positive and significant relationship between n-Ach and school performance while Bhatnagar (1969), Sinha (1970), Walaytiram (1974), Shesadri (1980), Reddy (1990), Singh and Parminder (2005), Wang and Xing (2009) etc. have reported no significant relationship between two variables. It is important both for parents and educators to understand why promoting and encouraging achievement motivation from an early age is imperative. It is a consistent striving force of an individual to achieve success to certain standard of excellence in the competing situation. The students form self concept, values and beliefs about their abilities at a young age at school. The development of early academic achievement motivation has significant implications for later academic careers. A great deal of research  has found that students with high achievement motivation are more likely to have increased levels of academic achievement and have lower dropout rates (1997). So, the investigator feels that raising of achievement motivation of the high school students may go a long way in enhancing the academic achievement. That is why, the present study endeavoured to examine the achievement motivation of tribal and non-tribal students. Further, works on achievement motivation and its relationship with school achievement are very scarce particularly in North-Eastern States. Except a few studies e.g. by Gokulnathan (1971), Deka (1992) etc. no other significant study is reported from this region

‘Happy Families?’: Single Mothers, the Press and the Politicians

FOR THOSE OF US who have been following how lone parents are represented in media and political debates over the last few years, the shift was all too apparent. By Spring 1997, the political scapegoating of single mothers as being responsible for tearing apart the moral fabric of society had become less frequent; tabloid headlines which screamed ‘family breakdown’, ‘scroungers' and ‘welfare benefit crisis' appeared less often; and many politicians had started to project themselves as, at the least, concerned about the welfare of lone parents and their children. Surprising really, that is, until we remember the backdrop—the UK General Election and 1.3 million UK lone parent voters. By April 1997, a growing backlash against the more extreme and pathologising accusations against single mothers had rendered explicit vilification unacceptable. To pull votes a different sort of language had to come into play—one which didn't risk turning off the electorate but would still allow a freezing or cutting of welfare spending on lone parent families. Since it was now politically inexpedient to engage in vitriolic attack, there emerged a new discourse—one which reappropriated and redefined lone parents as chief targets of government aid. Close scrutiny of the texts circulating from 1992 to the time of the General Election offers insights of how policy agendas, political rhetoric and news interweave to construct a definition of lone parents which bears little resemblance to how they may see themselves

Nonresonant microwave absorption in epitaxial La-Sr-Mn-O films and its relation to colossal magnetoresistance

We study magnetic-field-dependent nonresonant microwave absorption and dispersion in thin La$_{0.7}$Sr$_{0.3}$MnO$_{3}$ films and show that it originates from the colossal magnetoresistance. We develop the model for magnetoresistance of a thin ferromagnetic film in oblique magnetic field. The model accounts fairly well for our experimental findings, as well as for results of other researchers. We demonstrate that nonresonant microwave absorption is a powerful technique that allows contactless measurement of magnetic properties of thin films, including magnetoresistance, anisotropy field and coercive field.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figure

A radiation-like era before inflation

We show that the semiclassical approximation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the minisuperspace of a minimally coupled scalar field in the spatially flat de Sitter Universe prompts the existence of an initial power-law evolution driven by non-adiabatic terms from the gravitational wavefunction which act like radiation. This simple model hence describes the onset of inflation from a previous radiation-like expansion during which the cosmological constant is already present but subleading.Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, no figures; final version to be published in JCA

Confirming Information Flows in Networks

Social networks, be it on the internet or in real life, facilitate information flows. We model this by giving agents incentives to link with others and receive information through those links. In many networks agents will value confirmation of the information they receive from others. Our paper analyzes the impact such a need for confirmation has on the social networks which are formed. We first study the existence of Nash equilibria and then characterize the set of strict Nash networks. Next, we characterize the set of strictly ecient networks and discuss the relationship between strictly efficient networks and strict Nash networks

A Wave-function for Stringy Universes

We define a wave-function for string theory cosmological backgrounds. We give a prescription for computing its norm following an earlier analysis within general relativity. Under Euclidean continuation, the cosmologies we discuss in this paper are described in terms of compact parafermionic worldsheet systems. To define the wave-function we provide a T-fold description of the parafermionic conformal field theory, and of the corresponding string cosmology. In specific examples, we compute the norm of the wave-function and comment on its behavior as a function of moduli.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures, v3: references adde

Cosmic D-Strings and Vortons in Supergravity

Recent developments in string inspired models of inflation suggest that D-strings are formed at the end of inflation. Within the supergravity model of D-strings there are 2(n-1) chiral fermion zero modes for a D-string of winding n. Using the bounds on the relic vorton density, we show that D-strings with winding number n>1 are more strongly constrained than cosmic strings arising in cosmological phase transitions. The D-string tension of such vortons, if they survive until the present, has to satisfy 8\pi G_N \mu \lesssim p 10^{-26} where p is the intercommutation probability. Similarly, D-strings coupled with spectator fermions carry currents and also need to respect the above bound. D-strings with n=1 do not carry currents and evade the bound. We discuss the coupling of D-strings to supersymmetry breaking. When a single U(1) gauge group is present, we show that there is an incompatibility between spontaneous supersymmetry breaking and cosmic D-strings. We propose an alternative mechanism for supersymmetry breaking, which includes an additional U(1), and might alleviate the problem. We conjecture what effect this would have on the fermion zero modes.Comment: 11 page

Cycles of construing in radicalization and deradicalization: a study of Salafist Muslims.

© Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.This article explores radicalization and deradicalization by considering the experiences of six young Tunisian people who had become Salafist Muslims. Their responses to narrative interviews and repertory grid technique are considered from a personal construct perspective, revealing processes of construing and reconstruing, as well as relevant aspects of the structure and content of their construct systems. In two cases, their journeys involved not only radicalization but self-deradicalization, and their experiences are drawn on to consider implications for deradicalization.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Cosmological stretching of perturbations on a cosmic string

We investigate the effects of cosmological expansion on the spectrum of small-scale structure on a cosmic string. We simulate the evolution of a string with two modes that differ in wavelength by one order of magnitude. Once the short mode is inside the horizon, we find that its physical amplitude remains unchanged, in spite of the fact that its comoving wavelength decreases as the longer mode enters the horizon. Thus the ratio of amplitude to wavelength for the short mode becomes larger than it would be in the absence of the long mode.Comment: 11 pages, 5 postscript figure

Is Brane Inflation Eternal?

In this paper, we show that eternal inflation of the random walk type is generically absent in the brane inflationary scenario. Depending on how the brane inflationary universe originated, eternal inflation of the false vacuum type is still quite possible. Since the inflaton is the position of the D3-brane relative to the anti-D3-brane inside the compactified bulk with finite size, its value is bounded. In DBI inflation, the warped space also restricts the amplitude of the scalar fluctuation. These upper bounds impose strong constraints on the possibility of eternal inflation. We find that eternal inflation due to the random walk of the inflaton field is absent in both the KKLMMT slow roll scenario and the DBI scenario. A more careful analysis for the slow-roll case is also presented using the Langevin equation, which gives very similar results. We discuss possible ways to obtain eternal inflation of the random walk type in brane inflation. In the multi-throat brane inflationary scenario, the branes may be generated by quantum tunneling and roll out the throat. Eternal inflation of the false vacuum type inevitably happens in this scenario due to the tunneling process. Since these scenarios have different cosmological predictions, more data from the cosmic microwave background radiation will hopefully select the specific scenario our universe has gone through.Comment: 32 pages; v2: references and comments adde