In this paper, we review some of the initial researches, conducted during the 70's and later, about the potential role of external rewards on intrinsic motivation for learning. This is considered ...from different theoretical approaches such as self-determination theory, cognitive approach, attribution theory, general interest theory, behaviorist approach. The review is divided into three parts. Firstly, we review researches related to the effect of external reward on reducing internal motivation for learning and some research which is opposite to them. Secondly, we discuss the benefits of motivation for improving creative achievements. Thirdly, a significant part of this paper refers to analyzing the interests, as a part of students’ intrinsic motivation, which are not given enough attention in literature. Finally, we draw conclusions from the researches review. In the summary, analyzing these early researches, we can say that there is a good evidence that rewards have a strong influence on the students’ motivation for learning and high creative outcomes which is opposite to some initial researches (although this depends on the type of undertaking rewards). Considering these early researches indicates that producing negative effects requires combining specific conditions that are not characteristic for activities in everyday life, especially in school life and the idea that rewards disturb intrinsic motivation of individual requires a more detailed analysis. We believe that rewards are not harmful, which is proved by some researches, and that there is a certain interrelation between external motivators and task-oriented motivation which is confirmed by the cognitive approach. Future researches should be oriented towards the examination of the impact of different types of interests on learning and the variety of personal motives, examining the interactions between motivation and cognitive constructs, but also on how to develop personal interests and motivational constructs.
The paper discusses the connection between parenting style and the scope of the conflict between parental and business roles. For a parenting style, we used the concept of Dianne Baumrind ...(1966/2002), who defined three basic types of a parent-child relationship: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive. The problem of conflict is accessed through the theory of work-family conflict, the Greenhaus and Beutell model (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985), according to which the impact of work on a family consists of three sub-dimensions: time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, and behaviour-based conflict. The survey involved 204 respondents – employed parents with at least one child aged 3 to 16 years. The results of the research have shown that the authoritarian and the permissive parenting style is accompanied by a more obvious conflict of parental and business roles, while the positive effect of employment is linked to the authoritative parenting style. Implications of the obtained findings show that business and family responsibilities enable parents to participate in multiple roles, that can be used to promote their growth and development and better functioning in the parental role.
The research was organized with an aim to determine whether there is a correlation between sexual education in a family and parenting styles. Understanding a parenting style, we started from the ...theoretical concept of D. Baumrind. The research used the following instruments: The Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) Robinson, CC, Mandleco, B., Olsen, SF, & Hart, CH (2001), Parent / Adolescent Communication (PAC-J / M) James Jaccard, Patricia J. Dittus and Vivian V. Gordon (2000) & Miller (1998). Factor analysis showed that a dominant feeling among adolescents was shame to talk with parents about sex and contraception. We found statistically significant positive correlation between adolescent embarrassment and authoritarian parental style from a mother 0.546, and authoritarian parental style from a father 0.276, both significant at the level of 0.01, which confirms the hypothesis that the authoritarian style is associated with inadequate sexual education. The research results indicate the need for awareness of parents about the importance of sexual education because inadequate sexual education in family is a predictor for future risky sexual behavior. The results also point to the role of schools in educating parents in the context of a parenting style and sexual education.
In this paper we considered family functioning from a systemic perspective, while we try to point out the relationship between patterns of family functioning, parenting style of the parents and ...adolescents’ addiction diseases. The research was conducted with the aim to determine a correlation between a functionality of family systems, parenting style of parents and presence of adolescents’ substance abuse problems (alcoholism and drug addiction). A FACES III (Olson, Portner & Levi,1985) and EMBU (Arrindell, 2005) scales were used in order to establish patterns of family functioning and of parenting style of the parents. Two groups of adolescents were examined: 50 adolescents with addiction diseases (alcoholism and drug addiction) who had ambulance or hospital treatment at the Clinic for Mental Health Protection in Nis and 50 adolescents who do not have any problems with addiction. The results of the research showed that there are statistically significant differences between these two groups: in terms of the patterns of family functioning, it could be noted that the patterns of disengaged family functioning, parenting style based on rejection and overprotecting and a significant presence of incomplete family systems were much more dominant for adolescents with addiction diseases. Also, results showed that there is a correlation between family functioning, parenting style and the presence of addiction diseases which shows the need of family support in order to accomplish adequately parenting function. In organizing certain interventions in the family system it is important to have in mind that separately focused interventions which are directed towards parenting, have short-dated effects and that influences directed towards the functioning of the whole family system are much more adequate, which is actually our approach in this paper.
The subject of the paper is the correlation between family relationships and competent parenting, perceived from a systemic perspective. The aim of the research was to determine which family ...relationships are perceived as the most functional by the students, when the parents are presented with a permissive, authoritative, authoritarian, inconsistent, or indifferent educational style. We assumed that students assess, most positively, the family relationships where the parents are permissive. Our expectations, that the permissive style will be estimated as an indicator of the most functional relationships in one family, were based on the results of the research conducted by McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi (2007), and on the characteristics of the adolescent phase which our respondents are a part of. We used the following research instruments: Index of Family Relations (IFR, Hudson 1982) and five vignettes in which the educational style of parents was described (authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, inconsistent and indifferent). The examinees were 316 male and 268 female students. The results showed that the participants estimated most positively, the story about a family in which both parents apply the authoritative educational style, and then a situation in which the father applies the permissive and inconsistent educational style, whereas, when the mother is in question, inconsistency comes before permissiveness. When both parents apply authoritarian and indifferent educational style, family relationships are estimated as significantly negative, especially in the case where the indifferent education style is applied by both parents. This finding is not in accordance with our expectations, but it agrees with the Circumplex model of family relationships and the expectations that the authoritative educational style relies on functional family relationships, in other words that the functionality of family relationships affects competent parenting. Students’ perceptions of family relationships and competent parenting are very important for their adequate parenting in the future.
This paper deals with problems of correlations between a parenting style, involvement of parents in school activities and academic achievements of adolescents. The theoretical concepts of Baumrind ...(1991) and Epstein (2002) were used as theoretical framework. The research was conducted with the aim to determine a correlation between a parenting style, involvement of parents in school activities and success of adolescents in schools. There were 400 parents and 200 adolescents who were examined. A PSDQ questionnaire of parenting styles and dimensions was used (Parenting Styles & Dimensions Questionnaire, Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 2001) for examining parenting styles. A scale was designed according to the Epstein concept for examining the involvement of parents. The results of the research showed that an authoritative parenting style was characteristic for mothers, which was correlated with a higher involvement in school activities and a greater success of adolescents. An authoritarian parenting style is dominant for fathers and it is correlated with a lack of time necessary for involvement in school activities. The given results indicate a problem concerning involvement of fathers in school activities of children and the indifference of school to establish a partner relationship with parents. School should offer relevant information about effects of various parenting styles on achievements of students within collaborating between school and a family and establishing a partnership between school and a family.
Transgenerational transmission of family values and beliefs in upbringing children is performed continuously from generation to generation. Family system of values is determined by emotional ...relationships, attitude towards the family goals, principles, distribution of authority, and the preferred method of parenting style. In this regard, we wanted to investigate whether there were significant positive correlations between the assessment of parenting style in the primary student's family and their beliefs about the competent parenting. We examined 584 students of the University of Nis. The survey used the following instruments: Index of family relations (IFR, author of Hudson 1982) and the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ, Authors: Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 2001). We also used vignettes which present parenting styles of father and mother: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, inconsistent and uninvolved. The results showed that authoritarianism in the student's primary family contributed to their favourable assessment of those families where a parent manifest was authoritarian and indifferent parenting style and student's primary family was consistently less favourable in the assessment of corrective actions within the authoritative, permissive, and inconsistent parenting style. Coercion and Non-Reasoning as authoritarian style features contributed to a better assessment of indifferent parental style. The reference literature (Baumrind, 1966, 1991; Rohner, 2009; Teti, Candelaria, 2002), this parenting style is recognized as the most dysfunctional, because of its negative impact on the child development outcomes. This implies that influence of dysfunctional parenting is transferred transgenerationaly, which confirms the systemic approach to the family and its transgenerational analysis of patterns of functioning.
This paper examines family functioning from the systemic perspective while endeavoring to point out to the correlation between family functioning, parenting style and depressive reactions of ...adolescents. The research was conducted with the aim to determine a correlation between patterns of family functioning, parenting style and presence of adolescents’ depressive reactions. A FACES III (Olson, Portner & Levi, 1985) and EMBU (Arrindell, 2005) scales were used in order to determine the patterns of family functioning and parenting style. Two groups of adolescents were examined: 20 adolescents with depressive reactions who had ambulance or hospital treatment at the Clinic for Mental Health Protection in Nis and 20 adolescents who did not have any problems with depressive reactions. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences between these two groups. Statistically significant difference between families of depressed adolescents and adolescents from the control group has been present on the dimension of cohesion (t (38)=2.896, p<0.01) arithmetic mean for cohesiveness in the families of depressed adolescents is 34.35, while for the subjects from the control group is significantly above 41.05, which indicates that closeness, togetherness and a sense of belonging to the family are very important for the development outcomes of adolescents. Mothers of depressed adolescents who have expressed overprotective have low flexibility (r=-0473, p<0.05). Also, low emotional warmth of the mother points to the low flexibility and vice versa (r=0.451, p<0.05). When we talk about the sample of fathers, high rejecting of fathers indicates on low cohesiveness of the family system (r=-0.699, p<0.01), expressed overprotective of fathers also indicates to the low cohesiveness of the family system (r=-0576, p<0.01 level), and it is also associated with the denial of the emotional warmth of fathers toward their children (r=0.762, p<0.01 level). It can be concluded that the potentiation of closeness and togetherness in family functioning, which is promoted as a pattern in culture, have in a certain way, the protective function, as well as the contribution of fathers is very important for the development outcomes of adolescents.
The systemic approach to family and the assumption that there is a correlation between patterns of family functioning and parenting styles are considered to be most appropriate when examining this ...problem. According to the Circumplex model proposed by Olson and his associates, balanced cohesion and flexibility are related to the democratic/authoritative parenting, which is the most desirable style from the standpoint of the developmental needs of a child. The aim of our study was to examine this assumption on a sample of students studying at the University of Nis (316 male and 268 female students). FACES IV (Olson et al., 2006) was applied for testing family relationships, while PSDQ questionnaire (Robinson et al., 2001) was used for testing parental styles. According to the results, balanced cohesion and flexibility correlate with all three sub-dimensions of the democratic/authoritative style: connection, regulation, and autonomy granting. Authoritarian parenting style correlates negatively with all the functional patterns of family functioning and positively with all the dysfunctional patterns of family functioning. Mother's permissiveness correlates positively only with the dysfunctional patterns of family functioning, enmeshed and chaotic. These findings support the hypothesis that the patterns of family functioning are reflected in the parenting style, which implies that interventions targeting the parenting model cannot significantly affect the principal model of family functioning. Focusing on the strengthening of parenting skills should be replaced by influencing the patterns of family functioning, in order for the effects of the intervention on the parental subsystem to be adequate and efficient.