Reader’s Note:
Ahead of all, just to introduce this post, those few words sum up my research work of my first year of Master’s Degree.
“We are our choices”._ Jean-Paul Sartre
As a far as we know, through human society story and social sciences, the future of nations and countries undeniably rests on the hands of the emerging professionals. They build themselves via the different education structures which born from the previous generation work. However, this future depends on plural conditions that require so many expertise fields to identify all the high stakes.
For the present study we focused on the emerging professionals. Obviously, now the unavoidable institution which provides the best guarantee for a great professional career is University. Thereby, people tend to choose the field which allows them to explain the reality in the most relevant way. Hence, many ways appears.
As a foreign student in France, the aim of my study was to explore the social representations of the international students regarding to the French college or university on one hand. And on the other hand, our work plans to examine the different motivation sources which make those students go for it, and which make them continue. Here our thoughts were born from some literary searches about immigration, and from the study of Campus France (2016). To apply our experimental protocol we have built a survey which match with adequacy with the “association libre” skill. This one was applied to our population of heterogeneous foreign students, who are shared between the different continents of the world.
Therefore, our working hypothesis investigate how the foreign students perceive the French College? And what engaged them in this way ?
At the very beginning, we needed to frame the global overview to target the core dimension work. Thereby, our theoretical framework involve two main theories.
Foremost, we have Social Representations Theory of Moscovici S. (1961), the latter is overriding to measure the individuals representations. Hence, it intended to gauge the way the people incorporate [in their mind] an object. Then those representations are shared by individuals group. By the way we take the pattern of Abric J-C. (1994) to set the representations organization. This theory include three degrees of system to order the individuals representations; the core here is the central system, then we have two proximal change area, and at last is the peripheral system. When it comes to evaluate the motivation, psychology literary is strewed of theory. Here, we have taken the Autodetermination Theory from Deci and Ryan (2002). They proffer three levels of motivation distributed from the less level of motivation to the higher, respectively the amotivational or the lack of motivation, the extrinsic motivation and the intrinsic motivation.
The analysis lays out an overall positive appreciation conveyed by the students from all continent except from North America. The students from this geographical area seems to relate a lot of disorganization which refers particularly to the administrative heaviness and long process. Their central system connotation make the case of this negative appreciation, while the others show the opposite all the way on the three degree system of Abric pattern. Otherwise a second analysis aiming to investigate the various type of elements mentioned by the sample has revealed that the most expected from the French University is the quality of study, added to that students come to discover new social environment which emphasize the second element as the social relations. Moreover, the life quality as well as the last element is actually expected. As such, as compared to the others university systems, for instance, in France the amount appears less expensive. According to those results, the qualification status and the prestige engaged mostly the individuals in the French University curriculum.
Finally these studies allowed us to extend our knowledge about a part of student representations around French University. We contribute to bring to light some expectations. Apart from the results we are committed to express the limit of the study. First of all the size of the sample may not be as effective as we wanted. Regardless from the sample we have to take care about the cultural and social biases.
Bibliography :
Carbonneau, N., Paquet, Y., et Vallerand, R. J. (2016). La théorie de l’autodétermination : aspects théoriques et appliqués. Le modèle hiérarchique de la motivation intrinsèque et extrinsèque. (1è éd.) Bruxelles, Belgique : De Boeck Supérieur s.a
Jodelet, D. (2011). Représentation sociale : phénomènes, concept et théorie. Dans S. Moscovici, Psychologie Sociale. (2è éd., pp. 363-384). Paris, France : Quadrige-Presse Universitaire Française.
Webography :
Campus France, (2016). L’essentiel des chiffres clés n°10. Repéré à : http://ressources.campusfrance.org/publi_institu/etude_prospect/chiffres_cles/fr/chiffres_cles_n10_essentiel.pdf
I’m Rakotoarijaona A. Adimby. To introduce myself, i’m in a M.A Social and Organisation Psychology. As a student in human and social sciences, I got my Bachelor in Psychology in Madagascar, then I decided to move in Nantes for more opportunities and multidisciplinary work. At last, I intend to become a Psychologist through the pracite way.