@Miranda, YES, I have had very ambitious students, but they seems to be more rare from year to year! I do use their abilities and skills in order to help other part of the group to do what they have, help in lab.... Many of those young leaders among students are all over the world, most of them are professors at good Universities, some of them are very successful managers, leading engineers in large scale companies...!

Thank you Miranda for this good quesion. In general, more than 10% of my students who do care to perform better than their colleagues. Those are really excellent students.

@Prof Mahfuz, some of my good students are actually helping their friends to perform well. They aren't happy to be the only ones who can perform. They are a real boon in the class :)

I´m not sure, that some of the students really want to lead, but they are often very ambitious and helpful to their class mates.

Yes indeed, I have many students who were enthusiastic and ambitious to better off status. However, there was students need only certificate of a degree no matter what they can do for it. Diversity between students is required for positive attitude, while variability on the other hand is the scoring of their abilities. In this context you may find student excel to study to lead better, more informed personal lives and to be better citizens of their countries and this world? Other students do not have the motive.

@Miranda, YES, I have had very ambitious students, but they seems to be more rare from year to year! I do use their abilities and skills in order to help other part of the group to do what they have, help in lab.... Many of those young leaders among students are all over the world, most of them are professors at good Universities, some of them are very successful managers, leading engineers in large scale companies...!

Thanks for your views. We all have many kinds of students. There are those who are just concerned about marks and grades, and try to do minimum work. But on the other extreme, I find the students who are concerned about adding knowledge and skills for themselves and others. As Hashem says not all have this motive.

Sent from mobile.

Working in a research active university, the number of my contact hours in teaching is not very high. My classes are not small. I do not get deep conversation with my students and are not sure of what they really. Some are definitely goal-oriented and some are definitely not hard working.

Thanks for your posts. I was doing some work, after church, in a Subway cafe. It was almost empty, so I was very happy. And there my 4G Huddle was working fine. But I realized it was 5pm then and thesky was cloudy. So I drove home. Now I just have the mobile. But I will get back to you all from the laptop, soon...

Dear Miranda

I do a management development program for a large automobile company where I am training all their 149 first line managers in "leadership development for promoting cooperative employee relations." I do a two-day program for a batch of 16 managers at a time.

I also do 2 sessions of three hours to develop transformational leadership qualities among my MBA students. They are taught to become good human beings and good citizens; and also how to develop servant leadership qualities and inspiring and visionary leadership for high performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUYSDEYdmzw

Miranda

We get all types of students. Majority of them have a single objective of doing good that will ensure them a good career. Sometimes we do get students who would like to know more about the subject and see how it can help him/her to further his/her interests. It is a pleasure to work with them because I have to work hard beyond the scope of the course but in the process learn a lot from them.

Many students students sadly study to better their material condition!

Period!

Dear Miranda

Always talk to students about life, explaining that to be a good citizen, not just studying and getting good grades. Being a good citizen is one who respects the rights of others, treats everyone equally and despite all these characteristics will always be learning with the life, regardless their success.

Dear Nelson

So nice to read your thread. In fact, if most academics do this the way you do, it would be substantive contribution to societal transformation.

Perhaps, one issue in this kind of coaching/counseling is that the Gen Y is not too ready to take our advice. But I noticed that if we support our advice to them with examples and illustrations they do like it. That is my experience.

But one thing I am sure, most of them are hungry for knowledge. And, if we can understand what and how they want and we can do it that way, they appreciate it also.

Dear Tobias,

you sure are right, but you can´t adress reproaches to these students.

I always taught in this sense, it is more less more selfish we go further, deeper, we approach wisdom, discovery and true excellence ..

Unfortunately and in this time, I observed statistical increase of the number of students who behave like traders, they think only of their results and their diploma!

Although I was teaching mathematics and philosophy of mathematics, I always had chances to underline the importance of being a good human. Usually I take examples from the life of good and great scientists and philosophers. In addition the teachers are the basic examples for students.

Scientific research is essential to improve the quality of future specialists, due to the high rate of development of science and technology which professionals have to respond creatively to the problems of greatest relevance and importance. Developing scientific thinking is one of the purposes of Higher Education and it is responsibility of all the disciplines that compose a career. Among the main functions of a university professor is their ability to use the results of the research to form the student. The scientific research should be an academic requirement since the early years of career, as part of integral formation of students. We obtain very good results in Physics discipline in the development of student scientific work with students of the Biomedical Engineering career at the Instituto Superior Politécnico Jose Antonio Echeverría, significantly increasing the number of students participating in scientific research and their motivation for this, the activity of independent and creative work and making the link between knowledge and practice as well as the integration with other disciplines of the career.

A very interesting question ...

These students are rare, but they eventually appear. And I believe that the examples given by the teacher can always help to increase the number of these bright students.

Definitely YES.

Cheers,

JP

Thanks for your views.

@Ouyang, you say: 'Some are definitely goal-oriented and some are definitely not hard working.' In relation to this, my director recently told off several lecturers. They have come back from UK where they did PGCE, they should be teaching in English, but they didn't. Their excuse is that students prefer them to teach in the native language. For each of them to study in UK, the monthly allowance was 650 pounds! And one of my friends guessed that for each of them the country used RM 1 million.

@Profs Taiar, Ljubomir, Noureddine,Tobias: 'Simply YES but their % decrease year after year.' And there are more students who only have external motivation for career or grades (as Tobias, Noureddine said). And sometimes, students have little or no motivation as Ouyang said! But let's go on doing our best, to be a good example!

Miranda: I am very surprised to hear that those students were taught in English while studying in the UK. I guess it must be part of the agreement of package that these students hsould be taught in English. If so, a formal complaint should be launched.

Actually teaching them in Englsih would be much easier in the UK --- it would be much more difficult to teach them in Malay. Qualified Malay-speaking teachers in the UK must be few. Sometimes students make excuses when they are not doing well. Could it happen that they did not do so well and blame the teaching was not done in English?

@Ouyang, the aim was that our students should be taught in English. They all passed PGCE or post grad certificate of education. But when they came back, they weren't always teaching in science in English. But they should, because such a lot has been invested in their UK education.

Dear friends, I have changed this question slightly to make it clearer. If at any time you think that my questions are not clear enough, please feel free to get in touch with me directly. Thanks.

[email protected]

Complicated question.

Unfortunately, a great learning does not always guarantee a good job and a good life. Top doctors are usually not the best students, so with honors we appreciated its owner more than colleagues and superiors.

Yes Prof, it's quite complicated. But these are characteristics of intrinsic motivation, as compared to Career motivation and grade motivation that are external motivation. As an educator, intrinsic motivation (IM) is more valuable to me; because my students who have this will be lifelong learners. I think that IM is more rare, and more beautiful and valuable.

I'm writing up a report on motivation and many of my Q's on motivation can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Miranda_Yeoh/questions?ev=prf_que

Dear Miranda Yeoh,

I totally agree with you.

Hello friends, our good friend, Lijo, has won the award for his poster at the recent conference in Cyprus. Today, he travels back to King Saud University.

So it pays to be intrinsically motivated :)

Congrats to Lijo and thanks for sharing this news @ Miranda :)

Hello George, and all, I have been busy and not much on QA  This question is on intrinsically motivated students.  Many students are just extrinsically motivated.  Here, at all levels most students look for a good grade, but I have a few who are most concerned to get all the knowledge and skills they can acquire.  They compete with themselves.  

Have a look at this paper by my countrymen that I uploaded on RG.  Thanks.

Data 5._3LVol17(1)2011Thang_Siew_Ming_et_al_doc.pdf (A REVIEW DATASET)

Dear friends, I asked the question such a long time ago.  Here at last is the RESULT, a study on my students.  They are more extrinsically motivated: grade motivation is significantly higher than intrinsic motivation.  Please read and see the appropriate table in this paper.  Thanks. (I think that some of you could guess that I was using the QA on RG for a good purpose.)

Article Motivation and Achievement of Malaysian Students in Studying...