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Learning Orientation (learning + orientation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

The "End of Geography" in Financial Services?

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2000
Local Embeddedness, Territorialization in the Interest Rate Swaps Industry
Abstract: This paper provides evidence that the globalization of financial services has not undermined the importance of local embeddedness in world financial centers, among global banks. Using qualitative data from interviews with senior bankers in the interest rate swaps (derivatives) industry in Australia, in this paper I demonstrate the importance of spatial relationships and processes of local embeddedness in the production of swaps. Local embeddedness is attributable to the rapid exchange of financial information in formal dealing networks that serve as central information sources, enabling dealers to formulate a "market feel" that influences their dealing strategies. Information interpretation and decision making in dealing processes and specialist financial labor provide the foundations for the product-based learning orientation of swaps dealing. Dealing networks are underpinned by social relationships, requiring face-to-face interaction that is facilitated by spatial proximity. Although the global swaps industry is dominated by multinational banks, the centrality of these embedded networks impedes globalization in interest rate swaps dealing. The global swaps industry comprises an international network of highly localized but interconnected operations based in world financial centers. [source]

The impact of creativity on performance in non-profits

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & VOLUNTARY SECTOR MARKETING, Issue 4 2005
Hilton Barrett
This article examines how creative climate affects learning orientation and its relationship to organizational performance. The study also assesses creativity's link with market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and organizational flexibility. Past research on creativity climate has explored areas such as the arts, high-tech, information technology, media, and the sciences. The focus of this study is to assess creativity's role in managerial decision-making in the non-profit sector. Sound use of creativity can improve planning, implementation, and control by non-profit organization executives. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Non-at-risk adolescents' attitudes towards reading in a Singapore secondary school

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 3 2008
Wendy Bokhorst-Heng
In this paper, we examine the various nuanced dimensions of adolescents' dispositions towards reading in one secondary school in Singapore, where a high-stakes examination culture often threatens to colonise the practices of leisure reading. Our focus is on the better and more avid readers as they were the ones that developed the more negative attitudes towards reading at the end of their first year in secondary school. Our analysis found that there were no significant differences between boys and girls in their declining attitudes, and that for both ,intrinsic motivation' saw the greatest decline. However, attitudes related to learning orientation remained stable, suggesting both the impact of constraints in an exam-oriented educational structure as well as possibilities for developing reading pedagogy and adolescent reading programmes. We argue that the more educators are aware of the multidimensionality and complexity of the attitudes and values that students bring to their reading, the more effectively they will be able to design and implement programmes and pedagogy to foster positive attitudes and promote a lifelong love for reading. [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]