Understanding Academic Motivation of High Achieving Students with Hearing Impairment in Higher Education: A Qualitative Study
This study explored the factors that motivate students with hearing impairment (HI) to excel academically at the university level. The study incorporated a qualitative research design. Purposive sampling was used to select ten students with HI from a private university in Lahore. All the participants were engaged in face-to-face in-depth interviews with the help of a sign language interpreter to gather the information. The findings of the study showed almost all the participants of the study were externally motivated, aiming at achieving contingent rewards. They seemed more interested in receiving external rewards (external regulation), or the influence from their families or universities have made them internalized the significance of their academic pursuits (introjected regulation), or they had chosen to identify with the value of education provided to them by family, teachers or others (identified regulation). Intrinsic motivation leads to creativity and high-quality learning; universities must spark intrinsic motivation among their students, and students with HI are no exception to that.