Differences in the Motivational Beliefs Term Paper

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Motivational Beliefs

Martin Eaton and Myron Dembo (1997) examine the impact of culturally-based motivational beliefs on academic achievement. Focusing on the Asian-American population, the authors present their findings in their article "Differences in the Motivational Beliefs of Asian-American and non-Asian Students." Working with the premise, based on prior research, that Asian-American students outperform their non-Asian counterparts on a variety of measures, the authors set out to determine what role motivational beliefs had on the differences in performance of Asian vs. non-Asian students. The researchers surveyed 154 Asian-American and 372 non-Asian students for the purposes of this preliminary research and based on their findings concluded two main points. First, Asian-American students are more strongly motivated by a fear of academic failure rather than by reward for success. The fear of failure that is strongly ingrained in Asian-American students is a result of parental pressure and socialization, which in turn are dependent on cultural factors. Second, Asian-American students report low levels of self-efficacy, the belief in one's ability to succeed. The researchers noticed that in spite of low levels of self-efficacy, Asian-American students outperformed their non-Asian counterparts. The inverse relationship between self-efficacy and performance is a major factor in the current research and warrants further attention and applicability to other ethnic and cultural groups. However, the authors note that such studies should always be grounded in cultural awareness; cognitive and motivational factors should be examined with regards to specific populations because of the saliency of cultural differences.

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Further research on the topic could therefore examine the nature of motivational factors in other communities besides Asians and Asian-Americans. Moreover, researchers could also take care to not over-generalize about Asians and divide their populations into more specific cultural delineations such as Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc. Southeast Asian and Indian populations should also be studied to see whether the hypotheses apply to these communities as well. In addition to examining the motivational factors affecting Asian-American student performance, further research could examine the factors responsible for high or low achievement within other ethnic and cultural communities.

In addition to examining the importance of culturally-rooted motivational beliefs, further research could also be based on the premise that self-efficacy is not necessarily a predictor of high performance achievement and could even potentially undermine success. As the authors of this study point out, self-efficacy among non-Asian students is largely a "self-protective illusion based on inadequate self-knowledge," and that there are "maladaptive consequences of optimistic (illusory) self-efficacy," (438).

Eaton and Dembo discuss their problem clearly, outlining their reasons for performing the research and placing it within the context of prior research. The fact that Asian-Americans usually outperform….....

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