Massey Documents by Type

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294

Browse

Filters

20092

Settings

Subject: search.filters.subject.Learning motivation

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    An investigation of the relationship between students' perceptions of workload and their approaches to learning at a regional polytechnic : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2009) Giles, Laraine
    This thesis investigates students? perceptions about their workload and their approaches to learning, employing a regional polytechnic as a case study. Data was collected using a mixed methods approach. The convenience sample consisted of 269 full-time undergraduate students who completed a questionnaire indicating whether they perceived the workload to be heavy or unmanageable at times, and those who did specified the reasons for their perceptions. All respondents also completed a modified ASSIST instrument to indicate the approach to learning they adopted. Analysis of the questionnaire data indicated that the majority of students perceived their workload to be heavy or unmanageable at times with the main reason given as too many assessments due around the same time. The issues raised from the data confirmed the results of other studies and pointed to a range of issues both internal and external to the institution. Thirty follow-up interviews were conducted to further investigate the issues raised in the questionnaire. A complex picture emerged from the interview data of a number of inter-related aspects in the teaching-learning environment that impacted on perceived workload and approach to learning, including assessment and overloaded curricula, motivation, time management problems resulting from part-time jobs or family commitments, and lecturer support. Trends or patterns signalled by the data provided an important first step to assist in planning changes in the teaching-learning environment at the regional polytechnic. The main recommendations were centred on a long term, collaborative action-research project to be set up within a programme, to review curricula, create a more stimulating and responsive teaching-learning environment, foster learning communities, and ensure a consistent approach to developing generic skills. The aim of the recommendations was to ensure students are motivated to learn, engaged, and have the skills and information needed to be effective learners, which in turn has the potential to change perception of workload and impact on approach to learning.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Italian identity and heritage language motivation : five stories of heritage language learning in traditional foreign language courses in Wellington, New Zealand : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics and Second Language Teaching at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2009) Berardi-Wiltshire, Arianna
    The study explores the motivational role of the personal constructions of Italian identity (Italianità) of five learners of Italian descent studying their heritage language by means of traditional foreign language courses in Wellington, New Zealand. By adopting a social constructivist perspective on both language learning and the motivational processes underlying it, and by applying such concepts as investment (Norton, 2000), ideal L2 self (Dörnyei, 2009) and language learning as identity reconstruction (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), the study aims to further our understanding of heritage language learning motivation as a socially mediated process (Ushioda, 2003). Qualitative data was collected through waves of semi-structured interviews from five case-study participants over the course of several months of learning. Responses were used to map the influence that the participants’ constructions of their own Italianità exerted on three aspects of their language learning motivation: their reasons for learning the language, the decision to embark on the study of it, and the maintenance of their interest and learning efforts throughout the learning process. Detailed observations of learning sites, classes and materials, and interviews with teachers provided rich contextual data concerning key episodes identified by the students as relating to different aspects of motivation. The findings suggest that Italianità is heavily implicated in the initial stages of motivation, but that its influence is mediated by the learners’ personal constructions of a multitude of internal and external factors, through which they come to personalise and prioritise their own objectives and identity ambitions in ways that guide their motivational arousal, their decision to pursue the language and their creation and visualisation of learning goals. Italianità is also found to have an influence on the maintenance and shifts in the participants’ motivational states throughout their learning, supporting a socially mediated view of L2 motivation in which motivational fluctuations are explained as the result of the learners’ own processing of and reaction to elements of their context, including critical events inside and outside the classroom, exchanges with teachers, peers and speakers of Italian, and ongoing developments of opportunities and challenges for the achievement of the personal goals and identity ambitions driving their learning.