Abstract

CHIECHER, Analía Claudia. Goals and contexts of learning. A study with first-year engineering students. Innov. educ. (Méx. DF) [online]. 2017, vol.17, n.74, pp.61-80. ISSN 1665-2673.

This article is structured by the theoretical perspective of situated motivation. We describe the motivational goals of students in different contexts. One hundred fifteen students participated during their first year in engineering degrees in a public university in Argentina. To collect data, we distributed a survey with five anecdotes describing students with different motivational goals. The subjects had to choose the anecdote that represented them best as university students and as secondary school students, as well as the anecdote they considered the “ideal” student. The survey also asked for a justification of the choices. The results informed us that the majority chose the goal of “not complicating things” in secondary school (45%). In the university context, the most important goal was learning (32%), which was also chosen as the characteristic of the ideal student (69%). The conclusions highlight certain variables that can be manipulated in context in order to influence the shaping of these profiles.

Keywords : First-year students; goals; higher education; learning contexts; learning motivation.

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