Browsing by Subject "motivation"

Research shows that motivation is an important part of mathematics learning. Without motivation to learn math, learning outcomes would be significantly worse. The purpose of the study is to find out what the motivation factors are during the mathematics lessons for grades five and six. Since previous studies also show that the teacher has a central role in creating and maintaining the motivation for mathematics, the teacher's significance for the motivation is also examined in this study. In the survey, 28 pupils from grade five and 24 pupils from grade six participated. In total, 52 pupils from three different schools in Itä-uusimaa participated. The material was collected during the spring of 2019. The survey is mainly quantitative where the material was collected through a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of two open questions, which were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. According to the results, the students were motivated during the mathematics lessons, they perceived mathematics as important and useful. The biggest motivating factor was the teacher's activity, where the students mentioned that a good mathematics teacher is kind, happy and helpful and has good subject and educational skills. A student with high internal goal orientation experiences the mathematics lessons as meaningful. High internal goal orientation was also associated with high values of one's own mathematical skills. The differences between the sexes and the grades were small.

The purpose of the study was to provide an overview of the latest research findings on motivation and engagement and their impact on student learning in schools. These results are then reflected against the theory base that already exists in motivation research to provide insight into how these theories can be used by teachers in their everyday life at school. The study was conducted as a qualitative systematic literature review. The data search was carried out through two electronic databases (ERIC and SCOPUS). 483 articles were identified in the initial screening and were eventually reduced to 13 articles that were used in the study. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are discussed further in the thesis. The material was analyzed using a narrative review. The results of the study showed that motivation and engagement have a direct and joint impact on students' learning and performance at school. Students who felt motivated and engaged towards learning used several strategies that supported their learning. The study showed that the relationship between motivation, engagement and learning is complex. Several different internal and external motivational constructs play an important role in students' everyday school life and engagement with tasks. Based on the findings, teachers should pay more attention to creating classrooms and using practices that support, motivate and engage students in learning.

The Finnish language might even feel foreign to many Swedish-speaking people in Ostrobothnia as they seldom get to use their Finnish language skills in daily life. Due to this, it might turn out to be challenging to motivate pupils to learn Finnish in school. In this study I have analysed the problem to see whether there is a recalcitrance against learning Finnish among the Swedish-speaking pupils in Ostrobothnia. Do these pupils find the Finnish language unnecessary in their lives? If so – what are the underlying causes? In what way is this problem handled by the teachers? The main purpose for this study is two-pieced: I want to learn how pupils think about the language teaching they get – are they motivated to learn Finnish in school, and do they have negative attitudes against learning the language? I also want to know what kind of teaching solutions the teachers have for motivating their pupils. Do the teachers recall motivation-loss among the pupils? I have used The Self Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan (2002) and The Expectancy Value Theory by Eccles and Wigfield (2000) as my theoretical background. I have also used some of the extensive research among bilingualism of Slotte-Lüttge and Forsman (2013) in this study.This is a qualitative research and the data is collected through interviews with four Finnish-teachers in both 2005 and 2018 and eight eight-graders in 2019. I have found out what the motivation for learning Finnish looks like amongst pupils in Swedish-speaking schools in Ostrobothnia. And I have also got to learn how the teachers take notice to these aspects in their planning of the language-teaching in the classroom. The Finnish-teachers witness great difficulties with the Finnish language among the pupils as the teachers often are the only representatives of the language. The pupils almost never get to use their Finnish language skills outside of school. There has been a progress in language teaching and the digitalization has resulted in a more versatile language education during the years 2005 and 2019. The pupils expect more opportunities for communicative language skills and there is a great need of authentic Finnish language environments in the Swedish-speaking parts of Ostrobothnia.

Previous studies indicate that positive learning experiences are related to academic achievement as well as to well-being. On the other hand, emotional and motivational problems in studying may pose a risk for both academic achievement and well-being. Thus, emotions and motivation have an increasing role in explaining university students learning and studying. The relations between emotions, motivation, study success and well-being have been less frequently studied. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of academic emotions, motivational factors and problems in studying students experienced five days before an exam of an activating lecture course, and the relations among these factors as well as their relation to self-study time and study success. Furthermore, the effect of all these factors on well-being, flow experience and academic achievement was examined. The term academic emotion was defined as emotion experienced in academic settings and related to studying. In the present study the theoretical background to motivational factors was based on thinking strategies and attributions, flow experience and task value. Problems in studying were measured in terms of exhaustion, anxiety, stress, lack of interest, lack of self-regulation and procrastination. The data were collected in December 2009 in an activating educational psychology lecture course by using a questionnaire. The participants (n=107) were class and kindergarten teacher students from the University of Helsinki. Most of them were first year students. The course grades were also gathered. Correlations and stepwise regression analysis were carried out to find out the factors that were related to or explained study success. The clusters that presented students' problems in studying as well as thinking strategies and attributions, were found through hierarchical cluster analysis. K-means cluster analysis was used to form the final groups. One-way analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis test and crosstabs were conducted to see whether the students in different clusters varied in terms of study success, academic emotions, task value, flow, and background variables. The results indicated that academic emotions measured five days before the exam explained about 30 % of the variance of the course grade; exhaustion and interest positively, and anxiety negatively. In addition, interest as well as the self-study time best explained study success on the course. The participants were classified into three clusters according to their problems in studying as well as their thinking strategies and attributions: 1) ill-being, 2) carefree, and 3) committed and optimistic students. Ill-being students reported most negative emotions, achieved the worst grades, experienced anxiety rather than flow and were also the youngest. Carefree students, on the other hand, expressed the least negative emotions and spent the least time on self-studying, and like committed students, experienced flow. In addition, committed students reported positive emotions the most often and achieved the best grades on the course. In the future, more in-depth understanding how and why especially young first year students experience their studying hard is needed, because early state of the studies is shown to predict later study success.

Motivation has an important role in academic learning for learning is regulated by motivation. Further motivation is centrally manifested by goals. Goals reflect values and regulate individual's orientation and what they strive for. In spite of the central role of motivation in academic learning, discussions on post-graduate education has somewhat overlooked motivational processes and concentrated on the excellence of performance. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of goals PhD students have and how they experience their role in their own scientific community. It was also purpose to study how these goals and experienced roles are in relation with study each other, context, possible intentions of quitting studies and prolongation of studies. Furthermore, the aim was to investigate how different postgraduates differ in terms of how they experience their learning environment. The data was collected with the "From PhD students to academic experts" - survey (Pyhältö & Lonka, 2006) from four complementary domains: medicine, arts, psychology and education. The survey consisted of both likert-scaled items and open ended questions. The participants were 601 postgraduate students. The goals and the experienced role in scientific community were analysed in terms of qualitative content analysis. The relation between goals and experienced role and background variables were tested using χ² and the differences between different postgraduate groups using one way analysis of variances (ANOVA). The results indicated that postgraduates goals varied based on whether they brought up goals related to the product (outcome of the thesis process), the process (thesis process as whole) or both the product and the process. Product goals consisted of for example career qualification and better status as process goals consisted for example of learning and influencing ones own discipline. The experienced role of the postgraduates differed in terms of whether the conception was organised, unorganised or controversial. Both the goals and the experienced roles were in relation with study context and commitment to the studies. The different postgraduate groups also differed in terms of how they experienced their own learning environment.

In a varied working environment, individuals are expected to have an increasingly strong ability to tolerate change and adversity. Several research findings point out that a motivated person performs better in challenges, which enables them to succeed in their changing tasks. Therefore, it is important to understand how the factors that influence motivation are un-derstood on the individual level. Quantitative research has widely studied areas of work moti-vation, often using self-determination theory. In this research the theory of self-determination was used to pursue to give structure to the individual’s perception of factors influencing work motivation, and individual’s perceptions and experiences were emphasized rather than their generalizations and connections. The purpose of this qualitative research was to describe and understand media workers` per-ceptions of their motivation and how environment appears as part of perceptions. This research was carried out in collaboration with one media company. The data was collected with semi-structured interviews, where ten employees of the media company were interviewed. Educa-tional background of the interviewees was at least a bachelor’s degree, and all of them were currently working in various media positions. Among the interviewees were digital salespeople, product developers and a journalist manager. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis. As motivating factors media workers emphasized the possibility of influencing their own work, freedom, and responsibility, as well as internal rewards from work. Interviewees perceived as internal rewards the meaning of the work, self-development, and social support, and these were perceived as more significant than the value of the external rewards. The expectations to the organization were centered around development-friendly and equality-oriented work com-munity, where people work together but individual operating models are allowed. Based on this research, organizations would benefit from focusing on designing operating models and prac-tices which would allow for more flexible opportunities in considering individual wishes and goals in future decision making.

Personal goals offer an important aspect of personality and motivation. Personal goals are conscious and subjectively motivated objectives by which a person directs his or her life over time. Personal goals are related to adolescents' subjective well-being. The aim of the present research was to find out, what kinds of groups of adolescents can be formed by the content of personal goals and how these groups differ in goal appraisals, meaningful life events and subjective well-being. The second aim of the study was to detect gender differences and differences between vocational and high school students in goal appraisals, meaningful life events and subjective well-being. Adolescents in upper secondary education (N=1144) were grouped together by the content of their personal goals using a person oriented approach and a cluster analysis. Clusters found in the analysis were named by the centre goal as (1) a property group, (2) a vocation group, (3) a future education and personal relationships group and (4) a self-focused group. Adolescents in the property group put a little effort into their career goal, they were not exhausted in school work and their subjective well-being was average. Adolescents in the vocation group felt progress in their career goal and put effort into it. They had goals related to life-style. They did not feel exhausted and their subjective well-being was average. The future education and personal relationships group put effort into their career goal and considered progressing in it. Personal relationships were important in their lives. They were exhausted in their school work but they did not feel cynicism. Their own health was one of their goals and they felt satisfaction in their life. Adolescents in the self-focused group did not put effort into their career goal nor considered progressing in it. They were exhausted and especially cynical in their school work. They suffered from almost clinically significant depression. They had low life-satisfaction and low self-esteem. The following gender and educational differences were found. Compared with boys, girls felt their career goal was more important and stressful, and girls also put more effort into it. Girls were more exhausted, depressed and they had lower self-esteem than boys. High school students felt more stress with their career goal than vocational school students. High school students were more exhausted, but still they felt more satisfaction with their lives. In practice, to cover adolescents' personal goals is a possibility to find distressed individuals who might be in need for extra support.

Mål. Syfte med denna studie var att ta reda på hur elever i årskurserna 5–6 upplever gruppdynamikens inverkan på studiemotivationen. Tidigare forskning visar att en grupp som består av motiverade och positivt inställda elever har en positiv inverkan på lärandet. Gruppdynamik är också i en central roll för gruppens trivsel, hur gruppmedlemmarna samarbetar och presterar. Studien tangerar även elevers upplevelser och åsikter om en bra gruppdynamik, deras egen studiemotivation och skoltrivsel i både skolan och den egna klassen. Metoder. Studien har gjorts i form av en kvalitativ intervjustudie. I studien deltog fem (5) grundskoleelever från ett lågstadie i södra Finland. Materialet för studien samlades in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Materialet har först transkriberats och sedan analyserats enligt grunderna för en tematisk analys. Resultat och slutsatser. Studiens resultat visar att eleverna upplever att vänner både i skolan och den egna klassen påverkar positivt på deras skoltrivsel. De lyfter fram att de har gemensamma intressen med klasskompisar och alla blir accepterade som de är. Gällande studiemotivationen ansåg alla deltagare att de drivs an en inre motivation. Deras största motivationsfaktor är att få lära sig. Resultaten visar även att alla deltagare tycker att de har en bra gruppdynamik i klassen, och de anser att en bra gruppdynamik är viktigt. Eftersom alla ansåg sig ha en bra gruppdynamik i klassen, var ingen av den åsikten att gruppdynamiken har en negativ inverkan på studiemotivation. Till motsats lyfte eleverna fram att en bra gruppdynamik gör det lättare att fokusera på det relevanta och att lära sig, i stället för att behöva grubbla över stämningen i klassen.

Goal: The aim of this master thesis are two. First, the aim is to describe, analyse, and interpret how instruction striving to strengthen the students' spelling skills is planned and realized in the lower school grades, in which the students are still at the beginning of their writing development process. Second, the aim is to investigate what assessment and feedback the students are offered regarding their spelling. Purposefully, the study has been limited to the students in grades 1 – 4 in primary school and to the Swedish and literature teaching subject. The study took place in schools in Finland with Swedish as language of instruction. The Core Curriculum of Basic Education (first published 2014, in English 2016) mentions correct spelling mostly incidentally, even if spelling skills may affect students' experience of themselves, their school success, and have an influence on their future study and professional opportunities. Therefore, it is important to explore how the primary school teachers have chosen to work to strengthen the students' spelling skills. Method: The empirical study is based on interviews with seven teachers, who teach in grades 1–4. The study was carried out from a realistic perspective to study as neutrally and objectively as possible the teaching that strives to strengthen the students' spelling skills. To support the interviews, an interview guide was created. The interview guide is based on a literature review based on previous research. In the analysis, I strove to find similarities, differences and repeated topics. Based on the collected material and the analysis process, eight topics emerged. Finally, I discuss the results in relation to previous research. Results: The interviewed teachers felt that the students develop their correct spelling as a natural part of all text work, both in the Swedish and literature subject and in cross-curricular teaching. The teachers believed that the students' writing motivation is more important than correct spelling. Obviously, the students are offered limited or no assessment and feedback on their spelling, with the exception of spelling tests. The results showed that in the interviewed teachers’ classrooms, spelling test is the only method by which the correct spelling is taught. The texts the teachers choose for the spelling tests usually contain a topic related to correct spelling, such as double designation or a certain sound. The teachers in this study found the use of spelling test problematic, since the students and their guardians have the major responsibility for practicing before the spelling test. Thus, the teachers felt that this created unequal conditions for the students.

Entrance to academic studies does not automatically lead to commitment in one's studies. There may be differences in student commitment across different learning environments. In the present study, combinations of problems in studying medical students experience were investigated in a lecture-based learning environment (n = 246) and in a problem-based learning environment (n = 231). Also differences between the combinations in task avoidance and differences between the combinations in academic achievement were investigated in each learning environment. Medical students were classified in different learning environments by K-means cluster analysis by cases into groups based on the following variables: exhaustion, lack of self-regulation, lack of interest and distress. Three groups of commitment among medical students were identified in the lecture-based learning environment: committed, carefree and dysfunctional students. The profiles were related to task avoidance but not to study success. The committed students expressed less task avoidance than the carefree students and the dysfunctional students. The latter two groups of medical students did not differ from each other in this case. Also three groups of commitment among medical students were identified in the problem-based learning environment: committed, committed carefree and dysfunctional students. The profiles were related to task avoidance and study success. The dysfunctional students expressed more task avoidance than the committed carefree students and the committed students. The latter two groups of medical students did not differ from each other in this case. The committed students and the committed carefree students gained better grades than the dysfunctional students. However, the former two groups of medical students did not differ from each other in this case. The implications of the study for research are discussed.