Cross-Cultural Motivation & Self-Regulation

Abstract To find out whether motivational orientation and self-regulatory strategies to learn have a cross-cultural significance, this study used the MSLQ scale to investigate 143 pre-service teachers from India and 200 pre-service teachers from the US. It studied the relationship and difference between motivation and self-regulatory strategies in academic learning across countries, and the contribution of each to the prediction of achievement. Regression indicated that intrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy, and rehearsal predicted academic achievement in US, while self-efficacy and peer learning predicted academic achievement in India. Introduction The collective future of education in any country depends on the quality of teachers in the classrooms (UNESCO, 1998). The effective communication and transmission of values by pre-service teachers will shape the course that pedagogical processes take into the decades to come, thereby determining the quality and efficacy of the learners in the next generation (NCTE, 1998). The stress placed by UNESCO (1996) on developing strategic learning skills and fostering the motivational orientation of pre-service college students in teacher education programs in all countries of the world indicates that teacher education programs are today geared toward developing students' motivation and skill to learn (Delors, 1996). A survey of the existing research indicates that many studies have been conducted on the will or motivational orientation of pre-service teachers (Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990) and the skill or strategies (Zimmerman, & Schunk, 2001) by which they learn. Most of these studies have been conducted in the United States, (Murphy & Alexander, 2000), but very few in a cross-cultural context, and none have been conducted in the Indian context. This investigation extends the research to a different socio-cultural milieu, India, to compare the motivational orientation and strategic skills of college pre-service teachers in Mumbai, India, with their counterparts in the United States. Rajput and Walia (2002) states that teacher education in India is strongly based on strategies to learn, while sometimes motivation may not emerge as the poignant factor. The purpose of this study was to inquire into the relationship between motivational components and learning strategies in academic learning in the two countries, India and the United States, to determine whether these relationships differ across countries, and how. It also studied how each relationship contributed to the prediction of achievement. "Indian" students mentioned in this study are Indian students from Mumbai, India. In the last few decades, learning is viewed as a function of the students' own meaningful experiences in specific situations (Rorty, 1991). Learning therefore becomes relevant in the context in which it is embedded, and also implies the development of self-regulatory strategies (Zimmerman, 1989) and critical thinking skills (Garcia & Pintrich, 1992). Research conducted on the processing of these higher order skills has stressed that the cognitive aspects of the learning process are factors responsible for developing strategic skills that students implement in their classroom learning (Zimmerman, 1989). However, cognitive skills cannot be enhanced without motivational factors like goals and values, which influence the students' cognitive approach to a task (Pintrich, 1989). In the present investigation, the context of learning was defined and operationalized by the motivational orientation and learning strategies used to learn academic tasks. Motivation and Self-regulation There are various perspectives regarding the generic concept of motivation. Researchers like Schunk (2000) define motivation as the resultant effect of an individual's thoughts. It has also been described as a dynamic, internal process that energizes and directs actions (Murphy & Alexander, 2000; Deci and Ryan, 2000), and initiates the process of goal orientation. …