How does campus religious involvement affect the attitude towards learning of protestant pre-service teachers?

Religion plays a pivotal role in value formation in an individual, and in the case of an educator, can be one of the determinate factors of student value formation, as the teacher’s own value is a primary factor of developing goals and behavior. Given university is a critical time for students to develop their moral values, and the development of moral values in preservice teacher programs is instrumental to the development of the professional self, this research aims to understand how campus religious involvement (CRI) helps shape teachers’ own attitude towards learning for Protestant pre-service teachers.

A comparison of the attitude towards learning between pre-service teachers in a teacher-training institute who have participated in campus religious involvement (wCRI) and have not participated in campus religious involvement (nCRI) was undertaken using the Scale of Attitudes Towards Learning (Kara, 2010). Six interviews, three for wCRI and three for nCRI, were conducted to understand the factors behind the difference between attitude towards learning between wCRI and nCRI.

While no statistically significant result was observed in the questionnaire, factors that would affect the attitude towards learning, including the motivation, the attribution of relative learner success, and learner reflectiveness, were observed through the interviews. This study fills the gap of the current lacking research of how CRI students’ academic behavior in the Hong Kong context. It is hoped that through the study, with the influence of Protestantism in Hong Kong, the local value education curriculum may draw parallels to how CRI as part of student life affects the attitude towards learning, and formulate strategies to develop the moral compass of teachers, both pre- and in- service. Religious schoolsponsoring bodies may also draw inspiration from the result of the study to formulate plans for teachers’ professional development suitable for the context of the schools.