Keywords

East asian, north american, culture, chinese, motivation, self confidence, performance, goal, goal setting

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine if visualized goal achievement can help enhance East Asian Chinese students‟ motivation in learning and elevate their confidence in reaching their goals thus improving their performance. The goal achievement was visualized on a goal achievement progress chart that was self-created and self-managed by the East Asian Chinese students and the goal creating was under the supervision of their instructor. In this study, literature reviews on the theories, previous research studies in the perspectives of East Asian students‟ motivation in learning, goal setting on motivation, self-determination, self-efficacy, and expectancy theories are conducted to provide theoretical ground and legitimate evidence for this particular research. The researcher conducted an experiment in which students were given a learning task and required to set their own learning goals for that learning task under the supervision of their instructors. In this specific experiment, a total of 106 students from a university that was funded by American Educators in a central province in China agreed to participate in stages one, and two of the study, but some students withdrew from this research and some did not participate in both research stages therefore their data were take out from the data to make research result more consistent. Therefore eventually 72 students were considered eligible to go through the whole process of turning in the questionnaires and participating in the performance test. In this particular goal setting research study, the students were given the freedom of setting their own learning pace iii and managing their own progress on a visualized progress chart. The progress chart was visualized as a climbing/progressing line, which goes from bottom to top (see appendix C) once students achieved their learning goals. At the same time, the instructor provided feedback concerning the students‟ progress. Although some of the research results displayed no statistical significance for motivation and self-confidence during the pre and post session of the research, there is a positive correlation among motivation, self-confidence, and performance outcome. One research result did corroborate the previous research study that goal setting strategy would improve learning outcome.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Sivo, Stephen

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Education and Human Performance

Degree Program

Education; Instructional Technology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004512

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004512

Language

English

Release Date

February 2014

Length of Campus-only Access

1 year

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Education, Education -- Dissertations, Academic

Included in

Education Commons

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