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Learning Motivation (learning + motivation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%

Selected Abstracts

An International Comparison of Socially Constructed Language Learning Motivation and Beliefs

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2009
Sandra G. Kouritzin
French; Japanese; relevant to all languages Abstract: In our global economy, it is important to understand all factors influencing successful language learning. A survey of more than 6,000 university students in Canada, Japan, and France revealed differences in language learning beliefs, attitudes, and motivations in the three countries. Learners in Canada and France exhibited primarily instrumental and integrative motivation, respectively, whereas learners from Japan displayed a different form, social capital motivation, in which knowledge of a foreign language carries value in and of itself. Knowledge of these different forms of motivation has pedagogical and political implications for language teachers. [source]

The relevance of organizational subculture for motivation to transfer learning

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2008
Toby Marshall Egan
Although human resource development practitioners and researchers emphasize organizational culture as a major contributor to employee learning and development, results from this study suggest organizational subculture has greater influence on employee-related learning motivation. The relationships among organizational culture, organizational subculture, leadership style, and motivation to transfer learning are examined in this study of 354 randomly selected health care providers from a population of 1,255 employees of three of the largest health care organizations in the United States. Study findings indicate that organizational subculture was highly associated with employee motivation to transfer learning,far higher than organizational culture overall. Supportive and innovative subcultures have clear positive relationships, while bureaucratic subcultures negatively influenced motivation to transfer learning. Findings also support the differences between leadership style types and particular subculture types in relation to motivation to transfer learning. In terms of leadership style, a consideration style had a stronger relationship to motivation to transfer learning than did structuring style. Implications for HRD research and practice are explored. [source]

Why Do Part-time Workers Invest Less in Human Capital than Full-timers?

LABOUR, Issue 2009
Annemarie Nelen
We analyse whether lower investments in human capital of part-time workers are due to workers' characteristics or human resource practices of the firm. We focus on investments in both formal training and informal learning. Using the Dutch Life-Long-Learning Survey 2007, we find that part-time workers have different determinants for formal training and informal learning from full-time workers. The latter benefit from firms' human resource practices such as performance interviews, personal development plans, and feedback. Part-time workers can only partly compensate the lack of firm support when they have a high learning motivation and imagination of their future development. [source]

Why Are You Learning a Second Language?

LANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue S1 2003
Motivational Orientations, Self-Determination Theory
The data for this study were collected in my first year of graduate school for a term paper for a course I was taking from Luc Pelletier. When I began graduate school, Luc also started at the University of Ottawa as a new faculty member, and he taught a course in motivation. I had worked with Richard Clément for a couple of years already as an honors student and as a research assistant and had conducted research on orientations and motivation under his supervision as part of my honors thesis project. Luc was very interested in self-determination theory (SDT) and had worked with Bob Vallerand on an instrument to assess academic motivation from this perspective. Luc and I decided to carry out a study on language learning orientations using SDT and enlisted Richard's and Bob's involvement in the project. As a bilingual institution where all students were required to demonstrate competence in their second language (L2), whether French or English, the University of Ottawa was an ideal setting for this type of research. The project was a first examination of SDT in the language learning context, and to the best of my knowledge it was the only, or at least one of the very few, empirical investigations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the area. It involved the development of a valid and reliable instrument to assess the different subtypes of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It also explored the link between these motivational subtypes and various orientations to language learning that had been identified by Clément and Kruidenier (1983), including the travel, friendship, knowledge, and instrumental orientations. The results showed that the instrumental orientation and the SDT external regulation orientation were strongly correlated, and that the travel, friendship, and knowledge orientations were quite highly intercorrelated with identified regulation and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, the instrumental and external regulation orientation scales correlated in similar ways with the hypothesized antecedents of perceived autonomy and competence and the hypothesized consequences of intention to pursue L2 study and anxiety. In addition, the travel, friendship, and knowledge orientations were correlated with the hypothesized antecedents and consequences in a manner similar to intrinsic motivation and identified regulation. These results suggested that Clément and Kruidenier's 4 orientations may be tapping a similar construct as the SDT orientations. My only regret with this study is that I did not include a scale to measure the integrative orientation (Gardner, 1985) to determine its relation with the SDT subtypes. This issue would have to wait until a later study to be addressed. The results of this initial investigation encouraged me to pursue research integrating SDT with other theoretical frameworks of language learning motivation. I believe that the SDT framework has several advantages over some other formulations of learner orientations. SDT offers a parsimonious, internally consistent framework for systematically describing many different orientations in a comprehensive manner. It also offers considerable explanatory power for understanding why certain orientations are better predictors of relevant language learning variables (e.g., effort, persistence, attitudes) than others. Also, by invoking the psychological mechanisms of perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness, it can account for why certain orientations are evident in some learners and not in others. Moreover, the framework is empirically testable and indeed has stood up well under empirical scrutiny in our studies. Its clear predictions may also be particularly valuable in applying the theory in language teaching and program development. [The present article first appeared in Language Learning, 50 (1), 2000, 57,85] [source]

Impact of training periods in the emergency department on the motivation of health care students to learn

MEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 5 2009
Thierry Pelaccia
Objectives, Motivation is one of the most important factors for learning and achievement. The perceived value of the task, perceptions of self-efficacy and beliefs about control of learning are the main determinants of motivation. They are highly influenced by the individual's personal history and especially by significant past experiences. We assessed the impact of training periods in the emergency department on the motivation of health care students to learn in the field of emergency medicine. Methods, A survey was conducted in 2008 with 112 undergraduate medical students and 201 undergraduate nursing students attending an emergency medicine academic programme. At the beginning of the course, the students completed an anonymous 26-item questionnaire to assess their motivational orientations. Results, Perceived task value was higher for students who had previously attended a training period in the emergency department (P = 0.002). Perceived self-efficacy was depressed when the respondent had been confronted with negative outcome events (P < 0.001). Control of learning beliefs was affected negatively in students who had attended a training period in the emergency department (P < 0.001). Conclusions, Motivation is a major contributor to the success of learning. Training periods in the emergency department can have positive and negative impacts on the learning motivation of medical and nursing students in the field of emergency medicine. Ideally, and in terms of increasing motivation, health care students should gain experiential learning in the emergency department before attending a corresponding academic course. During this period, tutors should provide appropriate supervision and feedback in order to support self-efficacy perception and learning control beliefs. [source]

Willingness to Communicate in the Second Language: Understanding the Decision to Speak as a Volitional Process

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 4 2007
PETER D. MACINTYRE
Previous research has devoted a great deal of attention to describing the long-term patterns and relationships among trait-level or situation-specific variables. The present discussion extracts kernels of wisdom, based on the literatures on language anxiety and language learning motivation, that are used to frame the argument that choosing to initiate communication at a particular moment in time can be conceptualized as a volitional (freely chosen) process. The result is a degree of willingness to communicate (WTC) with the potential to rise and fall rapidly as the situation changes. Previous research based on both qualitative and quantitative methodologies is described that demonstrates the complexity of the processes involved in creating WTC. It is argued that methodologies must be adapted to focus upon the dynamic process of choosing to initiate or avoid second language communication when the opportunity arises. [source]