Understanding the Nature of Motivation and Motivating Students Through Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

This book is based upon three interrelated open naturalistic studies conducted to better characterise the motivational orientation of students in higher education. Open semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with undergraduates, students at community colleges and students in taught postgraduate courses in Hong Kong. The analysis used an exploratory grounded theory approach and resulted in a motivational orientation framework with six continua with positive and negative poles. On enrolment students had positions on the six facets of motivation, which shifted as they progressed through their degree according to their perceptions of the teaching and learning environment. The framework can, therefore, be used to explain both initial decisions to enrol and motivation to continue studying. The interviews included descriptions of teaching approaches and learning activities and their effects on motivation. This made it possible to describe a teaching and learning environment conducive to motivation, with eight supportive conditions. Each facet of the teaching and learning environment is illustrated with quotations from the three groups of students, resulting in a guide to configuring a teaching and learning environment conducive to motivating students. The emerging community-college sector in Hong Kong is used as a case study of the effects on student motivation of the expansion of the higher education sector through private colleges. Cultural issues are discussed, particularly the performance of Asian students relative to those in the West.

David Kember is currently Professor of Curriculum Methods and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania. Prior to this position, David worked in Hong Kong for 25 years, initially at the Polytechnic University and then Chinese University. David became Professor in Higher Education at the University of Hong Kong, the highest ranked university in Australasia. He spent six years running an inter-institutional initiative, operating across the eight universities in Hong Kong, known as the Action Learning Project, which supported 90 action research projects in which teachers introduced a wide variety of initiatives aiming to improve the quality of student learning. David is best known for research with qualitative methods, but has many publications with sophisticated quantitative techniques such as structural equation modelling. He has also been one of the pioneers for the use of action research and action learning as a mechanism for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. David has diverse research interests but has been highly cited in student approaches to learning and the influence of teaching and assessment on them; the Chinese and Asian learner; motivation; reflective thinking; teachers’ beliefs about and approaches to teaching; action learning and research for teaching quality improvement; adult education.