Abstract:

Earlier studies have shown that motivation changes across and after the transition from secondary to higher education. The results revealed that students’ the motivation score was lower at the start of the first year of higher education than at the end of secondary education. Research have also reported that college students were very motivated and concerned about doing well. However, this is in contradictory to results shown in the scores of the foundation students at the beginning of their programme. The different results are not surprising considering that motivation undergoes continuous fluctuations, indicating a dynamic changeability in learning across varied time spans. Motivation also does not remain constant, and it ebbs and flows in complex ways in response to various internal and external factors. A student’s motivational beliefs can go far in determining the student’s actions and efforts. Many decisions about studying and self-regulation in the academic environment are based these beliefs. A Learning and Study Strategy (LASSI) Inventory done on the students showed that the foundation students in the University of Nottingham scored below the 40th percentile in the Motivation scale. In order to help the students, we first need to find out what are the factors that affect the students’ academic motivation, which can only be done qualitatively through questioning the students. Hence focus groups were set up to identify the different factors that could be affecting the students’ academic motivation. Students who scored the lowest for Motivation in the inventory were invited to join these focus groups. An existing interview protocol by Van Etten et al. (1998) was used to as a reference for building the questions for this focus group. Van Etten’s study was used as the objective of the study was to seek the freshmen’s’ beliefs about their academic motivation. Van Etten’s study sample was similar to the sample in this study as it involved students in first year at university. Five focus groups were formed consisting of 6-10 participants. Results showed that the main lack of motivation among the foundation students were lack of self-efficacy and interest in the chosen programme. Although some students indicated that they had enrolled into the programme based on interest in the undergraduate programmes offered by the university, most mentioned that they were pressured by family members into doing so. These could be based on Asian cultural beliefs which place high importance to respect of the elders.

Keywords:

Academic motivation, motivational beliefs, Asian culture.