UNIYERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY - VIETNAM THE HAGUE — THE NETHERLANDS 1976 THE VIETNAM — NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT’S LEARNING: CASE STUDY IN MACROECONOMICS AT THE UNIYERSITY OF ECONOMICS — RO CIII MINR CITY By Le Thanh Nhan MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS TRt/0ff G DAI HOC KlfJ H TE TP.H0ly HO CHI MINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2009 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY - VIETNAM THE HAGUE — THE NETHERLANDS International ot Soclat studies 1976 THE VIETNAM — NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT’S LEARNING: CASE STUDY IN MACROECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS — HO CHI MINH CITY By Le Thanh Nhan Academic Supervisors: - Assoc. Nguyen Trong Hoai, PhD - Chan Van Thanh, M.A HO CHI MINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2009 CERTIFICATION I declare that the thesis hereby submitted for the Master degree at the Vietnam — Netherlands Programme for M.A in Development Economics is my own work and has not been previously submitted by me at another university for any degree. I cede copyright of the thesis in favor of the Vietnam - Netherlands programme for M.A in Development Economics at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City, November 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis.
I am most grateful to my supervisors, Assoc. Nguyen Trong Hoai and Mr. Chau Van Thanh, who have instructed, encouraged and given me comments for my thesis, as well as forgiven my mistakes while I was carrying out this research. I would like to thank to all lectures and staff of the Vietnam — Netherlands Programme at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City.
I also want to say thank you to my colleagues and friends at the Office of Undergraduate Training and Students Service Office at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City for their assistance in the process of my thesis completion. Finally, I especially thank to my partner friend, who me in finding helped materials, designing the survey and collecting data for the thesis. ABSTRACT The objective of this thesis is to find out the determinants that influence the performance of studying macroeconomics and their relationships. The scope of this research is limited to sophomore students at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City.
In the conceptual framework, hypotheses about determinants related to performance of studying macroeconomics were proposed. They are students’ aptitude, efforts, attitude toward economics along with their personal characteristics. A survey designed from Survey Economic Attitude from the National Committee on Economic Attitude Measurement has been used with Exploratory Factor Analysis to measure if the theoretical constructs in this research were satisfactory in terms of reliability and validity. The relationships and hypotheses then have been tested by using a Two Stage Least Square method.
The main findings are the significant impacts of aptitude and efforts on studying macroeconomics but the attitude toward it. TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATION.iv LIST OF TABLES. vii LISTOFF GUES.vii Chapter 1: Introduction. 18 Chapter 3: Research Methodology.1 Independent variables and its measurement .3 Empirical research model.28 Chapter 4: Research findings.4 Attitude and efforts toward macFoéconomics.7 7 Determinants influence macroeconomics seer.37 Chapter 5: Conclusions, Policy recommendation and limitations.3 Limitations ofthe research.50 ABBREVIATIONS - ACT: American College Testing - ATE: Attitude Toward Economics - GPA: Grade Point Average - MOET: Ministry of Education and Training - NUEE: National University Entrance Examination - OLS: Ordinary Least Squares - SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test - SEA: Survey Economic Attitude - TSLS: Two-Stage Least Squares - TUCE: Test of Understanding of College Economics - UEH: University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City - UTSS: Undergraduate Training and Student Services - WTO: World Trade Organization LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Gender and Average of Macroeconomics score Table 4.2: Testing the Mean Difference between two groups of gender Table 4.3: Descriptive analysis of location and average macroeconomics score Table 4.4: ANOVA analysis the difference between groups of location Table 4.5: Test of Homogeneity of Variances among locations Table 4.6: Tamhane test for the specific differences between groups of location Table 4.7: Attitude toward macroeconomics before studying Table 4.8: Attitude toward macroeconomics after studying Table 4.9: Efforts toward studying macroeconomics Table 4.10: Reliability statistics about efforts and attitude toward macroeconomics Table 4.11: Factor analysis for attitude before studying macroeconomics Table 4.12: Factor analysis for attitude after studying macroeconomics Table 4.13: Factor analysis for efforts toward studying macroeconomics Table 4.14: Summary of the hypotheses testing LIST OF FIRGUES Figure 2.1: Circular flow of influence from attitude through intention to performance as a feedback influence on attitude Figure 2.2: Conceptual framework Chapter I: Introduction 1.1 Problem statement The economic development in Vietnam was very impressive during the 1990 decade.
The growth of the economy comes along with many factors, directly and indirectly. One of them is from education, in my opinion. Although there have been some controversies about the progression as well as the fall while some renovations were deployed during last more than 10 years, nowadays, many (domestic and oversea) professors pay attention to a vast and complete educational renovation again, especially when Vietnam has accessed to WTO since 2006. A system of education stretches from kindergarten to higher education.
The rapid economic development brings about high demand of labor, so does the demand of managers. Then, a high proportion of high school pupils apply to universities which are major in economics and business administration. So are in-service students. The number of students enrolled in universities major in economics and business administration has been always higher than other disciplines recently.
Vietnamese people usually say that “first business, second medicine”. A famous ancient scholar Le Quy Don said that “No trade no wealth”. Another example is about the higher demand in field of finance and banking after stock market was established in Vietnam since 2001, lead to a number of faculties and universities focus in this field has grown while people are in doubt about their quality. Therefore, quality assurance of learning and teaching principles of economics is so quite important.
In the field of economics and business administration, it is much concerned about economics education at the undergraduate level. In my opinion, principles of economics are basic courses for any student, not only in universities of economics and business administration but also some other universities of social science. At the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), although they are compulsory subjects, only a small ratio of students paid high attention and spend more time on studying economics while the total load of education has been decreasing recently, generally about 240 credits required for an undergraduate student in 2004 reduced to 180 since 2006 (UEH 2006). The average score of microeconomics and macroeconomics at UEH in the last school year is only about 6.42 over 10, most focus on the range from 5 to 7 (Data from UTSS Office).
In a recent contest “Commentary essays for Vietnamese economy in 2008” organized by Student and Youth Union at UEH, only a little number of students could apply economics knowledge into their papers (UEH Youth Union 2008). So in this research, a wonder about which factors affected the outcome of a student studying principles of economics at the UEH has been raised. Then we could find out how to improve their performance as well as students classification for a better outcome. What determinants that influence student learning economics? Many economic education studies have attempted to answer this question.
A number of studies have examined the impact of student characteristics on student performance in introductory economics courses (Myatt and Waddel 1990; Anderson, Benjamin and Fuss 1994; Brasfield, Harrison and McCoy 1993, Betts and Morell 1999). Other studies evaluated the effectiveness of alternative methods of teaching on students’ study result (Davisson and Bonello 1976; Paden, Dalgaard and Barr 1977; Attiyeh, Bach and Lumsen 1969-1970; Bach and Saunders 1965; Charkins, O’Toole and Wetzel 1983). Aptitude, attitude and efforts toward studying economics have also been concerned in many researches. Allison (cited in Siegfried and Fels, 1979), Becker (1983a) has found low positive correlation between achievement and student’s effort, but Becker and Salemi (1977) didn’t find any impact of study time on performance while Siegfried and Fels (1979) confirmed that aptitude is the most important determinant, which is positively related to test performance.
In recently, Romer (1993) tested the effect of attendance on student performance. His finding is the attendance did contribute significantly to the academic performance of students in a large intermediate macro-course. The same to the research result of Devadoss and Foltz (1996). King 2 (1999) and Schmidt (1983) found that the time spending for studying economics outside the classroom is also important related to student achievement.
In the other hand, Park and Merr (1990) proved that effort and intelligence determine the academic performance in money and banking courses while demographic variables did not contribute. Briefly it is said that, researches about economic education have been started since 1960s in the US with factor determination, from simple socio- characteristics (gender, race, parents’ education, income, hours of work.) or time-distribution to more complicated factors (attitude, efforts, learning and teaching styles.) and then the difference of culture, race, gender on learning style, effects on performance and expansions applied to other countries as well as using modem teaching methods like computer-assisted, class game, web-based, etc. All students at UEH must study microeconomics, and then, macroeconomics in the general period. The structure of the macroeconomics examination consists of 2 parts, writing and multiple-choice while structure of microeconomics test has multiple-choice questions alone.
In fact, there is difference in what the two types of exams measure. “Multiple-choice questions may encourage memorization of information, rather than the understanding of concepts, are more likely to be misconstrued by students, and leave more to chance in the form of guessing” (Kreig and Uyar, p. Yates (1978, cited in Becker 1983a) argued that many educational objectives can not be only measured by multiple-choice tests. So, in order to have a better assessment, macroeconomics would be the reasonable decision for this research to find out the answers related to the wonder above at the UEH.2 Research Objectives The main objectives are: - To find out which determinants that influence students' performance in studying macroeconomics.
- To determine the relationship between determinants and UEH student’s performance in studying macroeconomics. - To suggest policy recommendations for lecturers, students and educational managers at UEH.3 Research questions Finding out determinants and theirs relationships to outcome of studying macroeconomics in order to answer the following questions - Question 1: Does aptitude of an UEH student have an effect on the performance of studying macroeconomics? - Question 2: Does attitude toward economics have an effect on the achievement of studying macroeconomics? - Question 3: Does efforts in studying economics have an effect on the achievement of studying macroeconomics? 1. Research methodology Firstly, a descriptive analysis focus on the relationships between personal characteristics such as gender, location to their achievement in economics was made to obtain a general view about UEH students. Secondly, a qualitative study was deployed to explore potential factors which may effects on studying macroeconomics.
Finally, an Exploratory Factor Analysis was used to test reliability and validity along with simultaneous regression and TSLS method to measure the relationships between outcome of studying macroeconomics and determinants identified. The Microsoft Excel and SPSS software are main useful tools to process the data for the precise factor analysis as well as regression.5 Delimitation This research based on information from students at UEH after they study microeconomics and before macroeconomics. Some information are archived at 4 the office of undergraduate training, others are self-evaluations from a paper of questionnaire.