Open AccessRelations between Students’ Motivation, and Perceptions of the Learning Environment
Author(s) -
Marko Radovan,
Danijela Makovec
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ceps journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2232-2647
pISSN - 1855-9719
DOI - 10.26529/cepsj.145
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , autonomy , feeling , intrinsic motivation , mathematics education , goal orientation , self determination theory , learning environment , goal theory , pedagogy , social psychology , neuroscience , political science , law
In this research, we have examined the characteristics of university students’ motivation and its connection with perceptions of the learning environment. Higher education teachers often find it challenging to decide how to organize their lectures and what instructional strategy they should use to be most effective. Therefore, we endeavoured to determine which characteristics of the learning environment best predict the motivational orientation of students and their satisfaction with the course. The survey included 120 postgraduate students of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. In order to measure their motivation, we employed several scales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich etal., 1991). For the purpose of this research, we created a new questionnaire for their evaluation of the learning environment. The results revealed a high correlation between the intrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy, and control beliefs. The most important factors of the learning environment that are connected with the formation of intrinsic goal-orientation and the enjoyment of education are the perception of the usefulness of the studied topics, a feeling of autonomy, and teacher support. To an extent, these findings are supported by the findings of those authors who recommend using those methods of teaching that are in compliance with the student-centred understanding of teaching and learning.