Understanding the Nature of Motivation and Motivating Students through Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

David Kember is currently Professor of Curriculum Methods and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania. Prior to this position, David worked in Hong Kong for 25 years, initially at the Polytechnic University and then Chinese University. David became Professor in Higher Education at the University of Hong Kong, the highest ranked university in Australasia. He spent six years running an inter-institutional initiative, operating across the eight universities in Hong Kong, known as the Action Learning Project, which supported 90 action research projects in which teachers introduced a wide variety of initiatives aiming to improve the quality of student learning. David is best known for research with qualitative methods, but has many publications with sophisticated quantitative techniques such as structural equation modelling. He has also been one of the pioneers for the use of action research and action learning as a mechanism for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. David has diverse research interests but has been highly cited in student approaches to learning and the influence of teaching and assessment on them; the Chinese and Asian learner; motivation; reflective thinking; teachers’ beliefs about and approaches to teaching; action learning and research for teaching quality improvement; adult education.