Date of Conferral

2015

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Marlon Sukal

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to learn how gender and learning method affect motivation and learning strategies in psychology, counseling, and social work graduate students. The variables of gender, learning method, motivation, and learning strategies are used by the self-regulation model to learning and the theory of independent learning to measure a student's academic success. Increasing the knowledge of these variables will be of interest to academic institutions and to the field of educational psychology because little is known about their interaction. The study's design was factorial quasi-experimental; it used a cross sectional survey consisting of a 2 x 2 factorial design. Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) were used to evaluate the variables. Gender and method of instruction (distance/traditional) served as the independent variables; the dependent variables were comprised of 6 motivation variables and 9 learning variables, as measured by the Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Age/ethnicity served as covariates. A sample of 86 psychology, counseling, and social work learners who were in a master's or doctoral program was used. The results showed significant differences in learning strategies and motivation of graduate learner's between gender. Men were significantly higher than women in control belief (p = .02) and extrinsic goal orientation (p = .01); they were also higher in rehearsal (p = .03), peer learning (p < .01), and help seeking (p = .03). These findings suggest that learning strategies and motivation were not influenced by learning method, but learning strategies and motivation were influenced by gender. These findings could be used to enhance retention and graduation rates as well stimulate future research on the topic.

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