Jinhua Mathias and Julie Wilson Teaching Fellows at the Foundation - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Motivation, Resilience and Self-efficacy and their Contribution to Chinese International Foundation Students’ Academic Adjustment Jinhua Mathias and Julie Wilson Teaching Fellows at the Foundation Centre, Durham University

Introduction and outline A study of Chinese international foundation students’ academic adjustment.  Background of the study  Method: questionnaire  Results and discussion  Limitation  Summary  Implications of the study

Background of the study The Background  Number of Chinese students in UK nearly 90000 in 2014  Wide range of degrees  Biggest challenge?  Contributing factors to success

Background of the study Motivation, motivation, motivation  Level of motivation – self motivated to being motivated by others  Types of motivation – intrinsic to extrinsic  Chinese students’ motivation to study abroad has two primary sources:  the motivation to have an education abroad as opposed to home ( Pull and push factor),  personal motivation to study a subject (intrinsic or extrinsic).

Background of the study Resilience  Resilience: resourcefulness, self-confidence, self- discipline, sensibleness, adaptability, and flexibility (Giordano, 1997)  Seven personal resilience characteristics (Wang, 2009): positive world view (PWV), positive self-concept (PSC), focused sense of purpose (FSP), flexible thinking (FT), social flexibility (SF), organising ambiguity (OA) and proactivity (Pro)

Background of the study General self-efficacy  Self- efficacy: an individual’s confidence or belief in one’s ability to effectively engage in behaviours toward one’s desired goal (Bandura, 1997)  Study showed that academic self-efficacy and optimism were strongly related to performance and adjustment.

Background of the study It is also important to know,  39.4 times the size of UK  55 ethnic minorities 3,200 miles  7 main linguistic groups 3,400 miles  Nearly 300 local dialects  Educational differences - eg.“GaoKao” “I was more shocked by south -north difference (within China) than east- west difference (China/UK).” (Zhao, S.)

The Aim Aim of the study  Foundation students’ motivation  Contribution to the academic adjustment of Chinese international students.

Method  Sample (57 students from academic year of 2012-2015)  Data collection instrument: creating the questionnaire  Motivation -- “The university student Motivation and Satisfaction Questionnaire version 2”, by Neill (2004).  Personal Resilience -- based on ODR’s Personal Resilience framework, as cited in Wang (2009).  General Self-Efficacy (GSE) (Luszczynska, Gutiérrez ‐ Doña & Schwarzer, 2005)  Adjustment -- relating to adjustment to teaching and learning, assessment and time management, communication and group work , etc.

Method  Data collection instrument: questionnaire  To ensure reliability, we repeated questions in different ways  All translated into Chinese and tested on former Chinese Foundation students  Received many helpful suggestions  Final version of questionnaire distributed twice in the academic year

Results and discussion Students’ primary sources of motivations (2012 -15) Motivation No. of students (out of 57) Self exploration (SE) 26 Altruism (AT) 22 Instrumental attraction (IN-AT) 29 Instrumental avoidance (IN-AV) 5 Hedonism (HE) 21 Self image attraction (SI-AT) 12 Self image avoidance (SI-AV) 8

Results and discussions Correlation of motivation with academic adjustment (2012-15) Type variables Pearson Correlation for Academic adjustment End of term Begin. of term Self – exploration (SE) Motivation Intrinsic 0.418** 0.371** Altruism (AT) 0.387** 0.241 Extrinsic Instrumental value attraction (IN-AT) 0.026 -0.059 Instrumental value avoidance (IN-AV) -0.029 -0.129 Hedonism (HE) 0.112 -0.167 Self-image attraction (SI-AT) 0.126 0.079 Self-image avoidance (SI-AV) -0.089 -0.062

Results and discussions Correlations of resilience and self-efficacy with academic adjustment (2012-15) Variables Pearson Correlation for Academic adjustment End of term Beginning of term Resilience 0.457* 0.067 Positive World View (PWV) 0.502** 0.162 Positive Self-Concept (PSC) 0.448* 0.403** Focused Sense of Purpose (FSP) 0.515** 0.223* Flexible Thinking (FT) 0.413** 0.269 Social Flexibility (SF) 0.587** 0.414** Organising Ambiguity (OA) 0.682** 0.442** Proactive (Pro) General Self Efficacy General Self-efficacy (GSE) 0.508** 0.297**

Results and discussions Motivation (intrinsic) Resilient Self-efficacy R=0.264 Pearson product for partial correlations (** indicating p<0.01)

Results and discussions Motivation Academic Adjustment (intrinsic) Personal resilience Self-efficacy

Limitations of the study  Number of students  Background of students  Lack of qualitative data

Summary of findings  Combination of motivating factors  However, findings indicate that only intrinsic motivation contributes to academic success  All have a positive effect on academic adjustment  It seems that they are not internally correlated

Implications of the study Asking the right questions could improve success rates. For Recruiters  Could be useful additional indicators for good academic adjustment For Student Support  Could identify potential problems in Induction Week  Appropriate support (such as peer mentoring) could be utilised