Students' motivation in practical schools in Hong Kong

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Abstract

The setting up of practical schools in Hong Kong aimed to cater for students identified as 'unmotivated'. However, there were no reliable tools in assessing the motivational behaviour of the students being placed in practical schools. This study was the first type of research conducted in Hong Kong intended to examine target students' motivation for learning. The subjects included 86 students from two practical schools, together with a sample of 121 academically low achievers from two low-band mainstream schools for comparison purpose, 108 of whom were secondary one while 99 were secondary two students. This study consisted of cross-sectional and longitudinal research methods. 50 teachers from two practical schools, as well as 52 teachers from two low-band schools were requested to respond to a questionnaire regarding their perceptions of students' motivational and disruptive behaviour. The motivational questionnaire involved multifaceted constructs such as attribution of success and failure, task-oriented motivation, learned helplessness, learned hopelessness, work avoidance, self-worth, value and purpose of education, parental support, and positive and negative attitudes towards schooling. Research techniques such as t-test, analysis of variance, effect size, and factor analysis were employed in the data analysis. The study provided evidence that students in practical schools and low-band schools showed different maladaptive motivation: the former tended to adopt a learned helpless motivation, accompanied with negative emotion whilst the latter were more likely to exhibit self-worth motive and work avoidance attitude. Students in practical schools showed deterioration in their motivation for learning between secondary one and secondary two. However, there was a positive change in students' motivation for students in low-band mainstream schools. Thus it was found that students' motivation for learning was less likely to be enhanced in a segregated setting. It is recommended that we should focus on aspects of school policy, the whole school environment and effective teaching strategies so as to enhance students' motivation for learning. Future research should involve quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data direct from classrooms.

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• Students' motivation in practical schools in Hong Kong. (deposited 17 Nov 2011 15:21) [Currently Displayed]