The Importance of Extrinsic Motivation [TOP]

Despite the growth of Asian international students’ presence, they face a number of challenges in their host counties. Wang and Hannes (2013) discussed that Asian international graduate students are likely to face unfamiliarity in Western countries due to the language, culture, and educational systems. Asian international graduate students faced multiple distinctive issues in their host countries (Le & Gardner, 2010; Sato & Hodge, 2009; Yan & Berliner, 2013). Especially, doctoral students, including Asian doctoral students may face unfavorable issues, such as a competitive nature in graduate school, comparison with other students, and being disfavored by professors. Compared to their native counterparts in their host countries, Asian international graduate students tend to have more predicaments to tackle. Moreover, when Asian international graduate students face arduous work in graduate school, they should have strong motivation such as different types of extrinsic motivation to conquer their predicaments in order to pursue graduate degrees. Niemiec and Ryan (2009) stated that when students faced laborious work, extrinsic motivation could help them achieve their goals in addition to intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic factors can be especially helpful for Asian international graduate students. For example, one study found that Chinese graduate students used intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to pursue their Ph.D., which held a high utility value (Zhou, 2014). According to Ryan and Deci (2000), understanding students’ types of extrinsic motivation is important for educators because educators may not be able to depend solely on intrinsic motivation to encourage student learning. Educators sometimes may provide tasks that may not be intrinsically motivating for students, therefore encouraging students to pursue active and volitional types of extrinsic motivation becomes necessary for successful teaching. Thus, Asian international graduate students can benefit from instructors’ different types of extrinsic motivation to pursue their graduate degrees.

The relationships with others are especially important to Asian international graduate students for their survival at graduate school. Relationships with their peers, faculty, and family members in their host country are more likely to play a role in their extrinsic motivation. Sato and Hodge (2009) reported that Asian international graduate students had perceived the relationships with Asian peers and with faculty to be important. Especially in graduate school, the relationship with faculty is considered to be essential for graduate students. Students tend to perceive that good relationships with faculty would more likely lead them to graduate degrees, publications, and prestigious jobs. These various types of external motivational factors can significantly contribute to Asian international graduate students’ extrinsic motivation to pursue graduate degrees in their host countries. Thus, the investigation of Asian international graduate students’ types of extrinsic motivation is essential.

Issues Related to Extrinsic Motivation [TOP]

Despite the importance of extrinsic motivation, Asian international graduate students’ extrinsic motivation has been studied sporadically in the literature. In the literature, there are more commonly found studies of Asian international graduate students’ challenges. Some research investigated Asian international graduate students’ experiences (e.g. Le & Gardner, 2010; Sato & Hodge, 2009), Chinese international students’ personal and sociocultural stressors (e.g. Yan & Berliner, 2013), and international students’ cultural adaption (Chirkov, Safdar, de Guzman, & Playford, 2008). Only one has focused on Chinese doctoral students’ motivation to pursue and complete graduate degrees (e.g. Zhou, 2014). As Zhou (2014) pointed out, extrinsic motivation has been rarely studied with doctoral students. This is the case for Asian international graduate students. Researchers have not paid much attention to Asian international graduate students’ extrinsic motivation. This may be because researchers may make assumptions that graduate students have naturally strong intrinsic motivation and overlook the importance of extrinsic motivation. More research is needed to understand independently the extrinsic motivation of Asian international graduate students such as those in this case study. Understanding Asian international graduate students’ types of extrinsic motivation would be useful for overcoming their difficulties and encouraging them throughout graduate school. Such research findings would contribute to the success of Asian international graduate students going through their laborious graduate school studies. The findings would also be beneficial for educators and researchers to understand their students’ extrinsic motivation in the classroom.

In addition, there is a methodological issue pertaining to the investigation of Asian international graduate students’ motivation in general. Although much research has been conducted in order to assess motivation using quantitative research, there is criticism about this approach (Dowson & McInerney, 2003; Phan, 2008; Phan, 2009). Since only a handful of researchers have used qualitative analyses to analyze Asian international graduate students’ motivation (e.g. Zhou, 2014), their types of extrinsic motivation are not commonly understood. Several researchers suggested that quantitative research categorizes students’ motivation but does not capture the complexity and multidimensionality of motivation (Dowson & McInerney, 2003; Phan, 2008; Phan, 2009). Thus, there is a need to examine Asian international graduate students’ extrinsic motivation through their real voices. Asian international graduate students’ perspectives about their types of extrinsic motivation need to be examined qualitatively.

The Purpose of This Study [TOP]

The purpose of this study was to examine Asian international graduate students’ types of extrinsic motivation to pursue graduate degrees with semi-structured interviews. The theoretical framework was Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The author summarized the theory to explain types of extrinsic motivation in the next section. Applying motivation theory is important because motivational theoretical framework is not commonly used to understand graduate students’ experiences (Zhou, 2014), not to mention specifically Asian international graduate students’ extrinsic motivation.

Literature Review [TOP]

Site and Participants [TOP]

Asian international graduate students were defined here as students who were second language speakers of English, had permanent citizenships in their Asian countries, and had visas to study at graduate school and reside in the U.S. All the interviewees met these criteria. Baker and Edwards (2011) suggested a relatively small number of participants such as 6 to 12 people for a case study in order to study unique phenomena; the author in the current study selected 10 students. This number of students is small, but sufficient for the current study. A total of 10 Asian female international graduate students in the College of Education at a university in the Pacific, U.S. participated in this study in the spring of 2013. Due to the large number of international female students and limitations of male students studying in the College of Education, only female international students were selected.

The author used a convenience sampling method and selected the participants based on their ethnicities. The ethnicities of the students were four Japanese, four Chinese, and two students who did not wish their ethnicities to be identified, but they were from two different Asian countries. All the participants were representatives of the top eight countries for international students coming to the U.S. (Project Atlas, 2013-2014). With regard to students’ academic standing, four students were in Ph.D. programs and six students were in Masters’ programs. Three students were in Educational Foundations and seven students were in Educational Psychology. The author in the current study chose the two departments based on a snowball technique, which means to ask a participant about another student who would possibly share their insights about their motivation. Since finding Asian international graduate students who meet the Asian international graduate students’ criteria was difficult, the author chose this method. According to Merriam (2009), this is a common recruiting method for a purposeful sampling as qualitative studies. Their ages ranged from 26 to 40 and the median age was 28.5 years. The median of students’ duration of stay in the U.S. was 5 years.

The source of data collection was semi-structured interviews. Before conducting the semi-structured interviews, the author explained to them the purpose of her study, which was to explore their motivation in learning, and the confidentiality of the data. The duration of the interviews was from 20 minutes to 1 hour and the median was 30 minutes. All the interviews were conducted in English.

The author met the participants in various places, such as a school conference room and a library. The author gave the interview questions on site to each participant so that she could read and think before answering the questions. The author found that this method was useful for non-native speakers of English. During the interviews, the author recorded all the interviews for transcription later, except for one student’s. Even though the student agreed with the author’s recording before the interview, she did not feel comfortable while being recorded. The author stopped the tape and took notes. The participants signed consent forms and their participation was voluntary without monetary compensation. The internal review board (IRB) at the university approved this study.

Instrument [TOP]

The author created a series of interview questions based on the relevant literature in SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Most questions were open-ended questions and some were semi-structured questions. Since SDT was utilized as the theoretical framework in this study, the author used the deductive coding approach, which was to focus on categories and themes that emerged from SDT. In addition, because relationships were important to the students, the author included relational questions, which could influence students’ extrinsic motivation. The relationships with faculty and cohorts, especially Asian cohorts can lead Asian graduate students to be successful (Sato & Hodge, 2009). These two contextual themes were included in the instrument. Further, family influence was found in research (e.g. Le & Gardner, 2010; Zhou, 2014). Family influence questions were also included in the instrument. Extrinsic motivation questions consisted of students’ four types of motivation on external, introjection, identification, and integration on STD in relation to family, faculty, and classmates. Examples of questions were “How important is it for you to establish relationships with faculty?”, “How important is it for you to get good grades on peer evaluations from your classmates?”. These questions respectively attempted to measure external regulation and introjection regulation. Besides students’ expressed perception of degrees of importance of question items, the author asked follow-up questions asking why they felt that way. A total of 16 interview questions were created.

After conducting a pre-test, the author slightly changed the wording of a few questions. After reading the transcriptions several times, the author identified students’ extrinsic motivation first. Even though all the interview questions were designed to ask types of extrinsic motivation, some of the students’ responses were categorized as intrinsic motivation. In that case, these comments were not included in the analyses. The author worked with motivation and subcategories with an educational evaluator, who was knowledgeable in qualitative research, in order to reduce her biases. The evaluator reviewed and verified the author’s themes and subcategories. This method contributed to the triangulation of the data. In order to protect students’ confidentiality, the author did not use students’ real names, when presenting findings. All the students’ names were pseudonyms.

Faculty Influence [TOP]

Participants perceived that the relationships with faculty members determined their fate in graduate school. To become successful or to fail in graduate school depends on one’s faculty. This means that pursing graduate degrees and gaining future jobs are also contingent on professors.

The author in the current study identified two subcategories: the influence from and power of faculty and the reward of future jobs. First, participants realized that professors were a key for their academic and future career success. Ayaka expressed, “If you don’t have a good relationship with your faculty, you are not going to finish your dissertation and (or) anything. Faculty is so important”. This student was motivated to maintain the relationship with faculty by the classic definitions of rewards and punishments. Without good rapport with faculty members, getting a graduate degree is at risk. Second, participants reported rewards of future jobs. Students reported that their ultimate goal was to obtain a better job, especially a university job after getting a degree. Min indicated, “…we think scholarship (scholars) is (are) the best. (They are) more superior than other professions or occupations”. This comment indicated that being a scholar at a university is prestigious in her home country and she expressed her hope to get a university job as a reward after getting the degree. Students’ motivation was influenced externally by their future job expectations.

Personal Recognition [TOP]

Students recognized that acknowledgements from professors and classmates motivated them to study further. They also felt that their getting graduate degrees in the U.S. made them feel proud. They believed that their hard work, perseverance, and effort led them to accomplish personal recognition. Students’ oral comments were not so easily categorized as in quantitative studies since they were not expressed in exactly the same way. Every statement would have a frequency of one. However, the categorization of responses the author in the current study has offered for personal recognition represents a majority of students in this case study, i.e., hard work, perseverance, effort, and pride were their collective opinions in the current qualitative study.

The author identified three subcategories: joy in being praised by faculty and classmates and pride of accomplishment. First, Asian international students reported joy in being praised by faculty and classmates. Students reported that professors’ acknowledgement and praise motivated them to study. They valued the faculty’s positive comments and feedback on their papers, because professors’ knowledge and expertise were important. They also appreciated professors’ private recognition rather than a public recognition. Min expressed, “…getting acknowledgment and compliments from professors really means a lot to me”. Furthermore, participants also valued classmates’ private recognition. Second, Asian students expressed their pride of accomplishment. Min reported when she discussed her getting a graduate degree, “The pride. I just want to feel accomplishment”. This quote indicates that she felt pride and enhanced her self-esteem by completing her graduate degree. Third, students expressed shame for not trying hard. They stated that they would feel shame if they would not try hard and also noted the importance of perseverance. They believed that grades were the results of effort; if they did not try hard, they would regret their action. Min noted, “But if I do not try my best, that is not excusable”.

Utility for Career [TOP]

Students’ ultimate goals were to acquire professional jobs in their native countries after getting graduate degrees. They executed several strategies to achieve such goals. Students thought that seeking academic and non-academic support from professors was important. Students also worked with their peers to learn from each other. Learning new knowledge and skills were essential for them to secure their future careers. Students’ oral comments were not so easily categorized as in quantitative studies since they were not expressed in exactly the same way. However, the categorization of responses as the author in the current study has offered for utility for career represents a majority of students in the current case study.

This theme was divided into three subcategories: academic and personal support from faculty members, mutual benefits from classmates, and knowledge acquisition. First, some students reported that the relationship with faculty was crucial and useful for personal and professional support, such as for encouragement, knowledge and expertise, and personal needs and well-being. Min noted, “ …it’s very important for me to establish (a) relationships with faculty. Not only for the schoolwork, but also for my emotional well-being and social cognitive well-being, all of that”.

Her comments showed that faculty’s involvement was extended to her personal life as well. Second, even though students reported that they usually studied by themselves, they studied with their classmates in order to seek mutual benefits in statistics classes, because they perceived the difficulty of understanding statistical concepts. Ayaka stated, “…we all understand (understood) and worked (on) all the questions by ourselves. And then tell (told) each other … what was the answer, right? And if I made a mistake in some of the parts, I can (could) ask how you got this answer and I can (could) learn”. She identified the benefits of working as a group that were useful for her. The student recognized that her classmates and she could learn from each other by contributing to a study group. This indicates that when they faced enigmatic subjects, studying with classmates was rewarding in order to get a good grade and to understand the subject. Third, graduate students noted that the key reason for working toward a graduate degree was knowledge acquisition for their future jobs. Tran indicated, “Because I need more knowledge about people…. I still need knowledge even in a simple position” (job). Her quote shows that in order to pursue a graduate degree, she identified the importance and value of learning about her area of study.

Beside the themes and subcategories, the author in the present study did not find any significant comments about family and competition as they relate to extrinsic motivation. It should be also noted that the author in the current study did not find any relationship between elements of the demographic information, such as students’ majors, academic standing, age, country of origins, and extrinsic motivation.

The Types of Extrinsic Motivation [TOP]

Asian international students used three types of extrinsic motivations to pursue graduate degrees as follows: a) faculty influence, b) personal recognition, and c) utility for career. These types of extrinsic motivation helped Asian international graduate students pursue graduate degrees. The author discussed each theme below.

Implications for Classroom Practice [TOP]

Several recommendations are suggested for educators strengthening various extrinsic motivations for students’ optimal learning in the classroom. Instructors can utilize instrumental value to give students reasons to persist and be encouraged (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). For example, instructors may encourage Asian international students to write high quality research papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals and to become recognized researchers in the future. This would strengthen students’ external rewards. It is also suggested that educators talk with students on a regular basis to establish relationships with students, and to advise and assist students in writing theses or dissertations in order for them to get a degree. Zhou (2014) reported that receiving graduate degrees in the U.S. hold high utility value for Chinese doctoral students. Therefore, Asian graduate students would likely perceive that positive relationships with faculty serve to extrinsically motivate them for their future goals. In class, instructors may create small group activities to enhance student learning for mutual benefits and understanding. Classmates can also encourage to give written or oral feedback in person. As international students placed a high value on comments from faculty, as Dolan and Macias (2009) suggested instructors could give them constructive feedback. Especially Asian international graduate students would appreciate feedback both orally in person and in writing. Asian graduate students can also utilize peer support to deepen the knowledge in their field. These types of instructions can give students external reasons to study and to make their learning more enjoyable and comprehensive.

Limitations [TOP]

There were a few limitations in this study. First, all the interviews were conducted in English. Because the participants’ native languages were not English, there might have been linguistic biases in certain words. Their experiences and thoughts might have been more accurately captured if the interviews had been conducted in each student’s native language. Second, the family theme of the interview questions may need to be either modified or removed. Since the findings showed that students’ families did not have any influence on the students extrinsically, the family-related questions need to be re-considered. Third, since this study involved only a small number of female graduate students to assess their extrinsic motivation, the findings were only applicable in this limited setting. The findings in this study were based on these Asian international graduate students’ responses and they should neither be extended to other ethnicities nor to undergraduate students. This is one of the limitations of case studies (Merriam, 2009).