Second, when investigating the prediction of a variable in samples of classes of students, it is important to take the class into account. For example, if the criterion is class related as in course grades, some of the variation in the grades from class to class will be dependent on the teacher, the class, the nature of the evaluation materials, and so on. And, because of the makeup of the class, the degree of individual differences might well vary from class to class.Hence, class should not be ignored when calculating measures of association between the criterion and possible predictors. By taking class into account in this study it was demonstrated that motivation was a consistent predictor of English grades from class to class that was influenced by gender for the younger students but not for the older ones and that the prediction was not influenced by class environment. A similar result with respect to class environment was reported by Bernaus and Gardner (2008), who showed that English achievement among Catalan students was related to motivation but not to class environment in a study using hierarchical linear modeling. Similarly in a factor analytic study using the class as the unit of analysis, Bernaus, Wilson and Gardner (2009) demonstrated that teacher motivation was associated with student motivation and that whereas student motivation was associated with student achievement teacher motivation was not. In short, the results of the present study as well as these two suggest that the underlying process linking motivation to language achievement derives from the student’s perception of the class environment and not simply the environment itself
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