Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Exploring How Lecturers’ Behaviours Influence the Motivation of African Higher Education Students to Participate in Self-Directed Learning
Mbali Tsibuli, Prof. Charlene Du Toit-Brits
ABSTRACT:
Literature has shown that lecturer behaviours like providing high-quality feedback, implementing critical pedagogy, and positive interpersonal dynamics motivate students for self-directed learning (SDL), with much of the evidence coming from non-African contexts. The discourse scarcely mentions the unique sociocultural, institutional, and resource realities of African higher education, leaving a major gap in understanding how lecturer behaviour explicitly influences SDL motivation of African higher education students. Lack of contextually grounded indication may misalign SDL efforts. This systematic review addresses this gap by synthesizing existing peer-reviewed literature (2015–2025) from African Journals, Google scholar and Web of Science on how lecturers’ behaviours shape African education students’ motivation for SDL. Following PRISMA guidelines, 32 studies were analysed, revealing that in the African higher education context, lecture behaviours such as “strengthening student agency and ownership; fostering a supportive and safe learning climate; igniting intrinsic motivation through engaging instruction; demonstrating continuous learning and development; grounding learning in context to foster relevance and engagement has a potential to enhance student motivation for SDL. The review also revealed that students’ ingrained dependence; lecturers’ constraints and gaps in practice, and systematic institutional and contextual barriers collectively hinder the widespread and effective adoption of SDL. To bridge the gap between institutional barriers and lecturers’ constraints in endorsing SDL, African higher education must reduce lecturers’ excessive workloads and increase dedicated professional development opportunities to build lecturers’ knowledge and experience in SDL implementation. This strategy ensures that institutional initiatives directly empower lecturers to overcome practical obstacles, improving their teaching methods to better support SDL.
Keywords: Lecturer behaviours, Higher education, Institutional support, self-directed learning