Thepeople side of performance improvement

Structural Model of the Effects of Cognitive and Affective Factors on the Achievement of Arabic-Speaking Pre-service Teachers in Introductory Statistics

“…The assumption was that four of the seven latent variables (mathematical aptitude, mathematics anxiety, attitudes toward mathematics, and motivation) were precursors of learning statistics and therefore they were treated as exogenous, while the remaining three latent variables (attitudes toward statistics, statistics anxiety, and achievement in statistics) were treated as endogenous. As to structural relationships among the examined constructs, it was assumed that statistics anxiety decreases achievement in statistics (Onwuebuzie 1998(Onwuebuzie , 2000 while high mathematical aptitude, high motivation, and positive attitudes toward statistics increase achievement in statistics (Gal and Ginsburg 1994;Gerson 1999;Man et al 1994). It was assumed that negative attitudes toward statistics intensify statistics anxiety (Wisenbaker and Scott, 1997) and that greater motivation to succeed intensifies positive attitudes toward statistics (Auzmendi, 1991).…”

The missing link in HPT

“…In a series of articles in Performance Improvement (Gerson, 1999(Gerson, , 2000(Gerson, , 2001, I talked about the importance of the people side of HPT and performance improvement. These articles focused on what a performer brings to the performance situation, his or her motivational levels, and how emotions affect performance.…”

Commentary. The psychological side of performance improvement

“…When people engage in a performance, they bring to it a mindset (Gerson, 1999b), a set of behaviors, beliefs, and values (Gerson, 1999a), and a heart full of emotions (Gerson, 2000). We must influence all these factors to achieve performance improvements.…”

“…What was missing was the person. Again, our problem as human performance technologists is that we focus too much on the technology (systems) and not enough on the person (Gerson, 1999a(Gerson, , 2000. We need to spend more time on the people side of the model.…”

“…The reason is that our theories, models, and assumptions are technically sound, but they are not people oriented. In previous articles (Gerson, 1999a(Gerson, , 2000, I discussed why it was important for us as a field of inquiry to take into account both the people side of performance improvement and the emotional side of it.…”