Motivation, SelfRegulation and SelfConcept of College Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

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Motivation, Self-Regulation and Self-Concept
ofCollege Students Who Are Blind or Visually
Impaired

• Karo Caran
• George Mason University

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Abstract

• The purpose of this paper is to investigate,
  using the mixed methods design, motivation,
  self-regulation, and self-concept of students
  with visual impairment in order to determine if
  these factors influence college attendance and
  graduation. It is hypothesized that students
  self-regulation and motivation will be the same
  or higher as in the sighted students. Similarly,
  their overall self-concept should be the same or
  higher.
• The study will measure motivation and
  self-concept of 10 students. It will also explore
  their self-regulation and establish, by
  interviewing 5 students, if there are other
  factors that contribute to the attendance and
  college graduation. The results will help reduce
  the drop-out rate of blind college students. The
  findings will also help support blind students
  who plan to attend or are currently in college.

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Purpose

• To measure self-efficacy and self-concept of
  college students who are blind
• To explore self-regulatory strategies and other
  issues that may be important when conducting
  studies on blind students who attend college.

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Literature Review Self-Regulation

• No self-regulation studies were conducted with
  college students who are blind. Future studies
  may be based on self-regulation of sighted
  college students, e.g. Zimmerman and Kitsantas
  (2002) studied the influences of modeling and
  social feedback on the acquisition of writing
  revision. Students watching a coping female model
  gradually improving her writing technique on a
  sentence-combining task surpassed students
  observing a mastery model perform the technique
  flawlessly on a writing-skill measure and an
  array of self-regulatory measures, such as
  self-satisfaction reactions, self-efficacy
  perceptions, and intrinsic interest in the task.
  Students observing a mastery model surpassed
  those learning without the benefit of modeling on
  these same measures.

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Literature Review - Motivation

• No studies on motivation of college students who
  are blind have been conducted. Future studies may
  be modeled on studies conducted with sighted
  students, e.g. Reeve, Nix, Glen and Hamm (2003)
  tested models of the experience of
  self-determination in intrinsic motivation and
  the perceived choice.
• Results supported the model in which internal
  locus and volition, but not perceived choice,
  constitute valid indicators of self-determination.
  In light of the findings, the authors proposed a
  modified definition for perceived
  self-determination and discussed the conundrum of
  choice by proposing the conditions under which
  teachers can (and cannot) expect choice to
  increase students' intrinsic motivation.

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Literature Review Self-Concept

• Studies on self-concept have been conducted, but
  not in relation to college education of blind
  students. There has been a comparative study of
  blind and sighted students.
• Martinez and Sewell (1996) investigated the
  self-concept of students (college age) with and
  without visual impairment. There was no
  significant difference between the self-concept
  of the visually impaired and the sighted
  students. Moreover, no significant differences
  were found in the GPA scores and the IQ scores of
  the students with and without visual impairment.
  Competence seems to be more important than the
  fact of having a disability when students reach
  the college age.

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Significance

• The study will
• Investigate how college students who are blind
  motivate and self-regulate themselves and what is
  their self-concept
• Establish foundations for future directions of
  studies conducted with students who are blind
• Suggest concepts or constructs which will emerge
  during interviews and observations of students,
  which may lead the research on students who are
  blind in new directions

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Self-regulated Learning

• Self-regulation self-generated thoughts,
  feelings and actions that are systematically
  designed to affect ones learning of knowledge
  and skills (Zimmerman, 1989, 1990 Zimmerman
  Kitsantas, 1996).

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Motivation

• Social cognitive approaches to strategic learning
  focus on students perception of self-efficacy as
  a major influence on their motivation and
  strategic learning (Bandura, 1986 Schunk, 1989
  Zimmerman, 1989a).
• Self-efficacy refers to personal judgment of
  ones capabilities to organize and execute
  courses of action to attain designated
  educational performances, such as a particular
  grade or percentage of accuracy on a test
  (Zimmerman Bonner, in press).

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Self-Concept

• The totality of a complex, organized, and dynamic
  system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions
  that each person holds to be true about his or
  per personal existence (Purkey, 1988).

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Hypotheses Research Questions

• It is hypothesized that students self-efficacy
  and self-concept will be the same or higher than
  in sighted students.
• The research questions will focus on further
  exploration of their motivation, self-regulation
  and self-concept as well as exploration of other
  factors that may influence their college
  attendance/graduation. What motivates them to go
  to, go through, and graduate from college? How do
  they self-regulate in college? How is their
  self-concept influenced by their
  abilities/disabilities and achievements/limitation
  s? What are other factors that influence them?

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Study Participants

• Motivation and Self-Concept of 20 students will
  be measured (10 blind 10 sighted)
• 5 students self-regulation will be explored.
  They will also be asked open-ended questions
  regarding their college experience and will be
  observed in and outside the classroom. All 5
  students will be blind.

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Measures

• Quantitative
• Jerusalem and Schwarzers General Self-Efficacy
  Scale will be used to measure students
  motivation. The range of Cronbachs alpha is
  between .76 and .90. It is a Likert-type scale
  with 10 questions with the responses ranging from
  not at all true to exactly true. A sample
  question is I can solve most problems if I
  invest the necessary effort.
• Fitts Tennessee Self-Concept Scale will be used
  to measure the students self-concept. The
  reliability of the scale ranges between .60 and
  .90. It consists of 100 questions and the 5
  possible answer choices to each question vary
  from strongly agree to strongly disagree. A
  sample question is I am an attractive person.

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Measures

• Qualitative
• Students self-regulation will be assessed based
  on Self-Regulation Questionnaires developed for
  the purpose of the study. They will include
  questions such as are you a fast learner? and
  when you do your homework, do you take a lot of
  long breaks? No answers will be provided so that
  the students responses are not influenced by
  them. Students will also be asked to keep diaries
  in which they log their day-to-day activities and
  how much time they take.
• In addition to the two scales and the assessment
  of students self-regulation, an interview with
  open-ended questions will be conducted with five
  students, in order to further explore the
  research question, i.e. whether other factors
  than the three mentioned above influence
  students college attendance and graduation. A
  sample question is Do you have role models that
  have inspired you to attend college?

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Expected Results

• It was hypothesized that blind students
  self-efficacy and self-concept would be the same
  or higher than in sighted students. The reason to
  expect such results is that blind students who
  have gone through primary and secondary education
  should, by the time they enter college, have
  mastered self-efficacy beliefs and should have
  reflected a lot on who they are. They should have
  gained enough experience to know how
  self-efficacious they are and what their
  strengths and weaknesses are.
• The mixed methods approach has been chosen in
  order to measure the constructs that have
  previously been neglected or given little
  attention in relation to blind students, such as
  self-concept and especially self-regulation. as
  well as other factors that may influence
  students college attendance and graduation will
  be explored through surveys and observations.