Improving Student Engagement and Motivation: Perspectives of Iranian EFL Learners
Abstract
One critical problem most educators have possibly experienced is that some students drop out of school probably due to loss of enough motivation. Research indicates student engagement could not only increase motivation but help to sustain it at high levels. This relationship between these two constructs has already been researched quantitatively in language education. However, little research seems to have been done on exploring the ways of increasing student engagement and motivation in relation to each other using a qualitative design. The present study thus aimed at investigating the ways to improve student engagement as well as motivation with a qualitative design. The participants were 30 male, intermediate EFL learners of the Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Gorgan, Iran. These participants, selected through convenience sampling, attended the semi-structured interview sessions voluntarily. The findings of the study led to a model of determinants of student engagement and language learning motivation. These determinants include teacher behavior, teacher personality, and student behavior for student engagement, and teacher, self, and parents for language learning motivation. It is expected the outcomes will be to the benefit of language teachers, language learners, and materials developers.
Keywords
qualitative study; student engagement; language learning motivation; learner perspective
References
Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., & Sorensen, C (2010). Introduction to research in education (8th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2(1), 21–41.
Brooks, R., Brooks, S., & Goldstein, S. (2012). The power of mindsets: Nurturing engagement, motivation, and resilience in students. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 541–562). Springer.
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching (6th ed.). Pearson.
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Sage.
Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). Pearson.
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). Sage.
Davis, M. H., & McPartland, J. M. (2012). High school reform and student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 515–539). Springer.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
Dörnyei, Z (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Dörnyei, Z., & Csizér, K. (1998). Ten commandments for motivating language learners: Results of an empirical study. Language Teaching Research, 2(3), 203–229.
Fredricks, J. A., & McColskey, W. (2012). The measurement of student engagement: A comparative analysis of various methods and student self-report instruments. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 763–782). Springer.
Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59–109.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. Arnold.
Gardner, R. C. (2007). Motivation and second language acquisition. Porta Linguarum, 8, 9–20.
Ghelichli, Y., Seyyedrezaei, S., Barani, G., & Mazandarani, O. (2020). The relationship between dimensions of student engagement and language learning motivation among Iranian EFL learners. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 8(31), 43–57.
Greene, B. A., & Miller, R. B. (1996). Influences on achievement: Goals, perceived ability, and cognitive engagement. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21(2), 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1996.0015
Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & You, W. (2012). Instructional contexts for engagement and achievement in reading. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 601–634). Springer.
Juvonen, J., Espinoza, G., & Knifsend, C. (2012). The role of peer relationships in student academic and extracurricular engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 387–401). Springer.
Kanellopoulou, C., & Giannakoulopoulos, A. (2020). Engage and conquer: An online empirical approach into whether intrinsic or extrinsic motivation leads to more enhanced students’ engagement. Creative Education, 11(2), 143–165. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2020.112011
Karimi, S., & Sotoodeh, B. (2019). The mediating role of intrinsic motivation in the relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and academic engagement in agriculture students. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(8), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1623775
Lam, S. F., Wong, B. P., Yang, H., & Liu, Y. (2012). Understanding student engagement with a contextual model. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 403–419). Springer.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2013). Techniques and principles in language teaching (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
McClelland, N. (2013). Self-determination theory and L2-learning motivation in Japanese college students. Studies in English Language and Literature, 31(1), 91–206.
Menken, K. (2010). NCLB and English language learners: Challenges and consequences. Theory into Practice, 49(2), 121–128. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40650725
Mercer, S., & Dörnyei, Z. (2018). Engaging language learners in contemporary classrooms. Cambridge University Press.
Newmann, F. M. (1992). Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools. Teachers College Press.
Nichols, S. L., & Dawson, H. S. (2012). Assessment as a context for student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 457–477). Springer.
Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education, 7(2), 133–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878509104318
O’Flaherty, J., & Craig, P. (2015). The use of flipped classrooms in higher education: A scoping review. The Internet and Higher Education, 25, 85–95.
Oga-Baldwin, W. Q., & Nakata, Y. (2017). Engagement, gender, and motivation: A predictive model for Japanese young language learners. System, 65, 151–163.
Parvaresh, V. (2008). Metaphorical conceptualizations of an adult EFL learner: Where old concepts are impregnable. Novitas-Royal Research on Youth and Language, 2(2), 154–161.
Reeve, J. (2012). A self-determination theory perspective on student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 149–172). Springer.
Reeve, J., & Lee, W. (2014). Students’ classroom engagement produces longitudinal changes in classroom motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(2), 527–540. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034934
Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Jeon, S., & Barch, J. (2004). Enhancing students’ engagement by increasing teachers’ autonomy support. Motivation and Emotion, 28(2), 147–169.
Reschly, A. L., & Christenson, S. L. (2012). Jingle, jangle, and conceptual haziness: Evolution and future directions of the engagement construct. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 3–19). Springer.
Rumberger, R. W., & Rotermund, S. (2012). The relationship between engagement and high school dropout. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 491–513). Springer.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Skinner, E. A., & Pitzer, J. R. (2012). Developmental dynamics of student engagement, coping, and everyday resilience. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 21–44). Springer.
Xiong, Y., Li, H., Kornhaber, M. L., Suen, H. K., Pursel, B., & Goins, D. D. (2015). Examining the relations among student motivation, engagement, and retention in a MOOC: A structural equation modeling approach. Global Education Review, 2(3), 23–33.
Yazzie-Mintz, E., & McCormick, K. (2012). Finding the humanity in the data: Understanding, measuring, and strengthening student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 743–761). Springer.
Islamic Azad University of Isfahan Iran, Islamic Republic of
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4659-9672
Islamic Azad University of Isfahan Iran, Islamic Republic of
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4240-1999
Islamic Azad University of Isfahan Iran, Islamic Republic of
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1365-3214
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Holders of the submitted texts are the Authors. The Reader is granted the rights to use the material available in the TAPSLA websites and pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution - Share Alike (CC BY-SA 4.0). The user is free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
