Motivation in education system

Motivation, is part of the drive to get people to be more hardworking, more persistent to work out towards his or her goal. Learning behaviours is a product of either intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Hayamizu, 2007). Just thinking of how Thomas Edison able to keep on trying to invent light bulb after failed for uncountable times. His famous quote:” "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration" might reveal his belief on hard work contributing success, and what is motivating him to be the great inventor in history? Motivation is an interesting topic to explore.

Concerning the question in studying university, I would think that studying a degree is like a culture norm. It is a trend in Malaysia, and Singapore. If someone finishes his or her secondary school education, it is almost inevitably to further studies to specialise in a particular field unless the result is too poor. Without a good qualification, it is hard to negotiate with the boss to get higher pay, and demand for promotion. However, in olden days, there were fewer university graduates, and very few women getting higher education. The olden society doesn’t take university certificate as a requirement to get into job market, especially before industry revolution. Woman was not encouraged to study smart in school as well. As globalisation supports knowledge economy, the modern culture trend needs more high skill people with specialisation to have a university degree.

Initially, taking psychology course was not my first choice. Previously I studied Computer Science, and my degree is an external US degree that required to study liberal arts subjects: Sociology and Drama. From there, I started to grow interest into Psychology as I learnt to analyse personality in the different drama plots , and got to know more about social knowledge and human behaviour. “A Streetcar Named Desire” drama script caught my attention by contrasting the culture clash of two social class. A so-called high-class lady who developed personality problem and got into schizophrenia eventually. This drama is not just a movie, but it reflexes the culture, social and psychological problems. Few years later, I came to Singapore to work and decided to study part time in Psychology. I study psychology as an interest, and this motivation is closed to Abraham Maslow’s self-actualisation needs. Self-actualisation is associated with human fulfillment and personal satisfaction (Shiraev & Levy, 2007). Psychology is meaningfulness, with depth sense of critical thinking. I appreciate psychology knowledge that allows me to be a better person and improve my English too. Personally, I always stumble in English as it is not as good as my first language, Mandarin. This motivates me to improve my English language by reading and writing more.

Should motivation be an important factor to be considered in designing our curricula (schooling system in general)? Yes, definitely. Without motivation, it is harder to get a better achievement and improvement in studies. Facilitating motivation and success in school is strongly encouraged. For instance, a Self-Regulation Empowerment Program (SREP), that school professionals can use to allow adolescent students to take on in more positive, self-motivating way of learning. Consequently, students learn to set goals, select and monitor strategy effectiveness, make strategic attributions, and adjust their goals and strategies (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004). In fact, students who learned self-regulation processes during learning such as goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-reflection processes have better achievement and motivation (Schunk as cited in Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004).

This is not surprising fact as self-control people might have better intrinsic motivation but not comes from external environment. For example, students who only study harder when the parents offers reward. In my personal experience in teaching secondary students, those who score good marks are typically have full concentration in lesson, teacher’s attitude in rewarding seems does not affect much in their motivation to get good result. In contrast, poorer results were associated with poor class students who only get motivated to pay more attention in class if I promised some rewards or showed a fierce look. Hayamizu (2007) supported this situation. It was stated that intrinsic reasons were significantly not related to attributions of external causes and ability.

Understanding motivation also helps to know more about student behaviour. It was found that students who had more extrinsic motivation, such as external reasons, inclined to explain their failure is due to external causes. They tend to use maladaptive coping behaviour as well. However, for the students who scores lower than the means for all types of motivation were classified into the amotivational group. Amotivational group were motivated nether extrinsically nor intrinsically. The self-awareness of amotivational persons is lower, thus do not have self-evaluation (Hayamizu, 2007). It is necessarily to explore more on the amotivational students who are not motivated easily by other persons,. This is especially crucial to motivate amotivational students who scores less satisfactory academic result.

References:

Cleary, T. J., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2004). Self-regulation empowerment program: A school-based program to enhance self-regulated and self-motivated cycles of student learning. Psychology in the Schools, 41, 537-550.

Hayamizu, T. (2007). Between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: Examination of reasons for academic study based on the theory of internazation. Journal Psychological Research, 39, 98-108.

Shiraev, E., & Levy, D. (2007). Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and comtemporary applications (3rd ed.). Boston: Ally and Bacon.

Display rules in M'sia/Singapore

Emotion is an interesting topic for social scientific investigation as it explains as a notion about our true selves; the self that, after all the thinking and interacting are done, feels the rage, love, despair (Boellstorff & Lindquist, 2004). In terms of methodological individualism, emotions are framed as the property of persons. Emotion can be universal, or are influenced by its social experience which namely ‘context.’ Emotion’s location in culture are acknowledged in broad terms (Wierzbicka, 1999).

Singapore is a multiracial and multicultural society, which consists of 3 main ethic Asian communities, Chinese, Malays, Indian and other races. English is the main language used in Singapore, followed by Chinese language. However, Chinese culture in south East Asian countries still deeply rooted with Confucianism. Emotional and psychological matter may be affected by the mother tongue culture (Woo et. al., 2004). Confucian cultures emphasize on the social order and show respect for higher rank people, like the elderly. For example, one should not shout at parents, especially in public places. However, it is common to see the other way round like as what Sonja pointed out, scolding and beating kids in public when they are disobedient. Anyway, expressing emotion freely is possible within same ranking like friends or colleagues.

Besides, languages often considered as part of culture, and researchers found that all speakers of a language share a cognitive structure for emotion (Wierzbicka, 1999). I agree on this point. In the national secondary school for Malaysia, Chinese students are generally from two types of education stream. One type receives Chinese primary school education where chinese is the medium of instruction, and study Malay and English as second and third language subjects; another type study in a national Malay school, majority Malay students where malay language is the medium of instruction, and study English as a second language. It is widely recognized that two groups of Chinese students have differences in their emotion, way of communication and behaviour. The first group are typical Chinese who are more indirect communicator where emotions are hidden and subtler. In contrast, the latter group who are mixing with Malay classmates are more straightforward and blunt in communication and express emotions more directly. They are more outgoing and easy going as it is easier to understand and get along well compared with the typical Chinese students.

Public display of affection is different across culture and countries. When I first came to Singapore, I was a bit startled to see couples hugging and kissing freely in public. In my home country, Malaysia as an Islamic country, dominated by Malays, public display of affection is very rare and forbidden by Islamic law. Few years ago, a Chinese young couple aged around 23 years old was prosecuted by the local town council. The town officers claimed that the couple was hugging and kissing in a park was indication of indecent behaviour. This case was eventually brought up to the court and became a hot topic for debate at that time. I believe that such event sounds queer to westerner. Conservative culture doesn’t encourage openly express of emotion.

Anthropical study of this topic makes interesting reading. It may explain why westerners’ common comment of Asians being inscrutable.

References:
Boellstorff, T., & Lindquist, J. (2004). Bodies of emotion: Rethinking culture and emotion through southeast asia. Routledge Journals, 437–444.

Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wooa,B. S. C., Chang, W. C., Funga, D. S. S., Koh, J. B. K., Leong, J. S. F., Kee, C. H. Y., Cheryl, K.F., & Seah, C. K. F. (2004). Development and validation of a depression scale for Asian adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 677–689.

Nature And Nurture Are Both To Blame For Depression

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2008) — Depression is one of the most common forms of psychopathology. According to diathesis' stress theories of depression, genetic liability interacts with negative life experiences to cause depression.

Traditionally, most studies testing these theories have focused on only one component of the diathesis' stress model: either genetics or environment, but not their interaction. However, because of recent advances in genetics and genomics, researchers have begun using a new design that allows them to test the interaction of genetic and environmental liabilities -- the G x E design.

Studies suggest that the neurotransmitter dopamine may play a role in the risk for depression. Early negative interpersonal environments (i.e. rejecting parents) have also been implicated. So, University of Notre Dame psychologist, Gerald Haeffel, and colleagues investigated whether a gene associated with dopamine interacted with maternal parenting style to predict episodes of depression.

The researchers studied 177 male adolescents from a juvenile detention center in Russia. These participants were ideal candidates for the study because depression rates rise so dramatically during this period in life. The researchers used a structured diagnostic interview to diagnose depression and a questionnaire to assess aspects of maternal parental rearing (i.e. physical punishment, hostility, lack of respect for the child’s point of view, and unjustified criticism in front of others).

The results are fascinating. While neither factor alone predicted depression, the boys with especially rejecting mothers, and a specific form of the dopamine transporter gene were at higher risk for major depression and suicidal ideation. This study, which appears in the January issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is among the first to support the role of a dopamine related gene in the onset of depression.

By the year 2020, depression is projected to be the 2nd leading cause of disability worldwide. Identifying factors that contribute to risk and resilience for depression is vital to our society. The results suggest that using psychosocial interventions to increase dopamine activity in the brain, helping patients focus on identifying and pursuing new goals and rewards could prove beneficial to lowering depression rates.

Adapted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Association for Psychological Science (2008, January 16). Nature And Nurture Are Both To Blame For Depression, Study Says. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/01/080115102642.htm

Childhood Mental Health Problems Blight Adult Working Life

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2008) — Mental health problems in childhood blight adult working life, suggests research published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. And problems in working life are associated with mid life depression and anxiety.

The findings are based on over 8000 participants of the 1958 Birth Cohort, all of whom were born during one week in March 1958, and whose health has subsequently been tracked.
Their long term mental health was reviewed during childhood at the ages of 7, 11, and 16, using information from teachers and parents, and into adulthood at the ages of 23 and 33, based on personal interviews.

At the age of 45 the participants were then invited to discuss their working lives and mental health. Living in rented accommodation, having a longstanding illness, no qualifications, and no partner were all linked to depression and anxiety in mid life.

But so too were workplace stressors, including little control over decisions, low levels of social support, and high levels of job insecurity. These stressors doubled to quadrupled the risk of depression and anxiety.

Internalising behaviours in early childhood and adulthood strongly predicted poor quality working life, with many work stressors. Internalising behaviours are usually defined as depression or lack of concentration, as opposed to externalising behaviours, such as bullying and disruption.

Although mental health problems in early childhood and adulthood did not fully explain the mid life depression, these could have a knock-on effect, suggest the authors. Mental health problems in childhood could affect the ability to pass exams and gain qualifications, so blighting an individual's prospects of getting well paid and satisfying work.

And people who have experienced mental illness early in their lives may also opt for less demanding, low status work, because it might be more manageable, but at the same time, less rewarding and more stressful.

Adapted from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

BMJ-British Medical Journal (2008, April 5). Childhood Mental Health Problems Blight Adult Working Life. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/04/080402194355.htm

Importance of cultural context in defining and understanding intelligence

Despite much controversy over the accurate definition of intelligence, most researchers agree that it is only a concept labelled by a word, or several related concepts represented by a word (Howard, 1993). This theory defines concept as a person’s unique and individual information about a category, where the category is considered as a set of things in the world. Generally, there are three major concept of intelligence: Spearman’s g, as a property of behaviour and as a set of abilities. Each concept have different information, and should be used in various ways (Howard, 1993).

I took the Koori Test and could not understand almost all questions. Everything sounds like ‘alien’ language to me. As expected, I scored badly with merely 40 marks, which stands for below average intelligence. Of course, this test clearly demonstrated that intelligence is bounded by the culture context. Sternberg (2004) further supported this by stating that work on intelligence within a single culture may fail to fairly acknowledging range of skills and knowledge that may constitute intelligence broadly defined. It is also more likely to draw wrong conclusion with over generalisation problem. The knowledge, which is learned in one culture context may not applicable to others who have different culture. For example, long time ago I took a IQ test online from a popular website, which claimed to be scientifically accurate IQ test. I thought I am supposed to be a language type who shouldn’t score badly for language ability, but the IQ test only able to test my English standard, which is second language for me. In the way, I believe that IQ test is very hard to determine one’s actual ability by using one standard test of intelligence for universal.

In terms of individual differences, everyone may have different knowledge regarding a particular category. Thus, it is inevitably creating a culture-free standard IQ test seems to be impossible mission. Even psychologist manages to come out with a measure standard of intelligence, doing translation into different language might be slightly different from the original text, which cause test bias. From the Koori Test, it shows that culture shapes language. For example, in Chinese language, it comes up with a complex vocabulary with detail classifications to address different relatives as Chinese culture emphasize on big family and stronger kinship. In contrast, in English, we use very general terms such as uncle, aunty, and cousins to describe relatives. This is probably due to western culture is more individualistic on one nucleus family compared to Chinese culture.

Different racial will probably have different culture, and whether racial differences in IQ are due to differences in intellectual ability, or to differences in exposure to information is a question (Fagan & Holland, 2007). Intelligence, was defined by Fagan and Holland (2007) as information processing. In fact, this definition is encouraging a better awareness of racial equality in intelligence, hence provides a multidisciplinary and broad understanding of intelligence. They concluded that cultural differences in the condition of information explain for racial differences in IQ. This might be helpful to explain why certain racial have higher intelligence and cognitive achievements than the other racial. Lynn and Longley (2006) suggested that the over-representation of Jews among Nobel prize winners possibly partly due to the higher average Jewish IQ. The reason behind it could be due to environmental and genetic theories of the high Jewish IQ, as for other ethnic and racial differences (Lynn & Longley, 2006).


References:

Fagan, J. F., & Holland, C. R. (2007). Racial equality in intelligence: Predictions from a theory of intelligence as processing. Intelligence, 35, 319–334.
Howard, R. W. (1993). On what intelligence is. British Journal of Psychology, 84, 27-37.
Lynn, R., & Longley, D. (2006).On the high intelligence and cognitive achievements of Jews in Britain. Intelligence, 34, 541–547.
Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Culture and intelligence. American Psychologist, 59, 325-338.

What Breed of Dog Are You? vs The Barnum Effect

I took a fun test- What Breed of Dog Are You? and I got my answer as:

you're a German Shepherd!

No bones, about it, you're a loyal, hard-working German Shepherd. Dedicated and always low-maintenance, people flock to you — they know they can count on you to get any job done, and done well. That focus and attention to detail spans from your personal to your professional life, too. Although you can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the projects you tackle, you still manage to keep cool and laid-back in social situations. You get a kick out of the little things and thrive when you're constantly busy and on-the-go. Easygoing and unpretentious, you don't need constant pampering and reassurance. A genuine, carefree pup, you're a true-blue friend, employee, and partner. Woof!

http://web.tickle.com/

Well, you can try this website for a lot of free test, if you don't have better things to do.

Ever since I study psychology- first term, I learnt about Barnum effect, I rarely trust these personality tests' validity and reliability.

he Barnum Effect is based upon P.T. Barnum, a master showman's famous saying 'There's a sucker born every minute.' “there is something for everybody”

http://www.paranormality.com/barnum_effect.shtml

http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/barnum_demo.htm

http://richardgpettymd.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/10/the_barnum_effe.html

It confirm my doubts about daily highlight of your horoscope- on newspaper, or some zodiac animals character. In simple word, Barnum effect means people commonly accepting over generalizing description about their personality. For example, it always claim that:" you are friendly, will throw temper when you are in a bad mood.....etc" Then, you mistakenly think:" Woh, it sounds accurate!" But wait a minute, don't you think that this is applicable to anyone? It is understood, most of the people would think themselves are friendly and not happy, surely have throwing temper sometimes....

In fact, given a choice between individual personality description actually based on a real test, most people choose the phony generic description as being more accurate. Ironic.

Share with you a famous experiment:

French Psychologist, Michael Gauguelin placed an ad in a Paris newspaper offering a free personal horoscope. Ninety-four percent of those receiving the horoscope praised the description as accurate. Whose horoscope had they all actually received? That of France's Dr. Petiot, a notorious mass murderer.

So, do you still want to read horoscope now? =)

Should a different teaching style be designed for aboriginal children?

To discuss about indigenous education, the first thing comes to my mind is majority versus minority. This brings up my thought about left-handed and right-handed children. The education systems are developed for the majority group who are right handed. Teachers do not receive formal training on how to teach left-handed students properly because methods are developed for right-hand learners, unless they are also left-handed who are able to understand the difficulties (Milsom, 1995). Consequently, these left-handed children, generally are identified as right brain dominance people, may not fully utilise of the learning style, which learnt in the classroom setting.

The aborginal child is similar to the situation of left-handed children in a mainstream education system, who have some differences in memories and cognitive or learning styles. Educators are supposed to maximise the students’ learning potential regardless of their cultural background. Overall, challenges of teachers from mainstream society to work with culture diversity, especially working with aboriginal children have not been adequately examined (Nickels & Piquemal, 2005). Aboriginal children may have difficulties in their studies as they do not conform to the mainstream culture on how schools defines what constitutes learning (Delpit & Dowdy, 2002).

According to the report of Ministerial Advisory Council on the Quality of Teaching (1998), teacher training seems not in depth for guiding aboriginal students. It is stated that beginning teachers agreed the addition of mandatory elements in their courses relating to aboriginal education, multicultural education, gender education and special education. They reported that the courses have focus on issues faced by targeted populations. However, the specific strategies on how to address the issues were deficient.

For example, group goals attained by working together in cooperation are encouraged by aboriginal culture, whereas western culture would regard it as permissive and lack of independent. This might have negative effect on the student learning and influence their interaction with non-aboriginal students (Armstrong & Patterson, 1975). Without understanding of aboriginal culture, cultural discontuity occurs as aboriginal students being forced to behave in ways that are incompatible with the values and norms of their own culture (Nickels & Piquemal, 2005). In addition, their research also demonstrated that aborignal students did not take initiative to raise their hands to answer a questions as often as non-aboriginal children. Showing ability of knowing knowldge was often contrary to aborginal behavoral norms as one should not showing oneself is better than others (Philip, as cited in Nickels & Piquemal, 2005).

In order to solve these issues, experienced teachers were modifying their teaching to meet the varied needs of students in their classrooms. For instance, team-teaching with English as a second language (ESL) teachers and literacy support for aboriginal students (MACQT ,1998). Murtagh (1982) investigated about Creole-speaking aborginal-Australian children in education. They were divided into two groups, bilingual school that has medium of language instruction through English and Creole, and monolingual purely instruction through english only. The result showed that the superiority of bilingual schooling over monolingual schooling for Creole-speaking students in terms of oral language proficiency in both the mother tongue, Creole and the second language, English. In fact, Cummins (cited in Murtagh, 1982) supported similar finding by discovered that students schooled bilingually had progressively greater success in learning compared with their counterparts schooled monolingually.

All in all, it is suggested that a different curricula and teaching style should be designed for aboriginal children. Teachers needs to understand their culture difference and playing important role in helping these aboriginal children to absorb knowledge effectively.


References:

Armstrong, H., & Patterson, P. (1975). Seizures in Canadian Indian children: Individual family and community approaches. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 20, 247-255.
Delpit, L., & Dowdy, J. K. (2002). The skin that we speak. New York: New Press.
Milsom, L. (1995). Left handed children are they losing out? Education Medica International, 32, 107-108.
Ministerial Advisory Council on the Quality of Teaching(1998). Towards Greater Professionalism: Teacher educators, teaching and the curriculum. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/reviews/macqt/macqfi.htm
Murtagh, E. J. (1982). Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with aborginal australians: some research findings. International Journal Social Language, 36, 15-33.
Nickels, B., & Piquemal, N. (2005). Cultural congruence in the education of and research with young aboriginal students: Ethnical implications for classroom researchers. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 51, 118.