The motivational orientations of adults in pursuit of graduate education

Abstract

This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews, describes the motivational orientations of adults in pursuit of graduate education. The participants consisted of students enrolled either in a master's or in a doctoral program of both private and public universities in Istanbul. Three classifications, namely goal-oriented, activity-oriented and learning-oriented suggested by Houle (1961) are explored. Initially, this thesis defines motivation for adults who are the participants and the targets of graduate education programs. Secondly, graduate education is discussed. Then, the motivational orientations of target adults are discussed. Regarding the data collection, in the first phase, demographic information forms were filled out. Then semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. The data were analyzed based on content and thematic analysis methods. The findings indicated that Houle's typology ( 1961) is still applicable for this Turkish case, but there are also some new extensions. An additional classification named as mix-oriented emerged for this Turkish case. In addition, goal oriented Turkish learners showed that they can also have a goal to avoid something like military duty. Therefore, a sub-category named as avoidance-oriented emerged for the category goal-oriented. Additional findings about daily lives, educational backgrounds, future plans of students and their evaluations on graduate education also emerged from the data. The study brought about a general perspective on the motivational orientations of adults in pursuit of graduate education. In addition, it opened new matters of discussion to increase the functions and the qualities of future graduate education programs. IV