2009/08/10

Transitional stages and students' motivation

Eirini Geraniou has written an article called The transitional stages in the PhD degree in mathematics in terms of students’ motivation. This article was published online in Educational Studies in Mathematics on Friday. Here is the abstract of Geraniou's article:
This paper presents results of a longitudinal study in the transition to independent graduate studies in mathematics. The analysis of the data collected from 24 students doing a PhD in mathematics revealed the existence of three transitional stages within the PhD degree, namely Adjustment, Expertise and Articulation. The focus is on the first two transitional stages, since the data collection focused mainly on these. Based on the first two transitional stages and the students’ ways of dealing with them, which were called ‘survival strategies’, three types of students were identified. The importance of motivation for each transitional stage and the successful transition overall are considered as well.



2 comments:

teachplacejul09 said...

In research on the effect of motivation on learning, students' critical thinking ands learning strategies have been related to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation . Intrinsic motivation for learning is defined as the desire to understand or to learn for the sake of learning; extrinsic motivation is a desire to attain an external goal.

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Anonymous said...

Very Useful post on Motivations.

Thanks,
karim - Positive thinking