EPSY 251

1. EPSY 251 M. Young, Ph.D. (860) 486-0182 Myoung@uconn.edu 130 Gentry Bld.

2. Welcome • The Online Syllabus • From the Virtual Classroom • Summary of Requirements • WebBoard Discussion 15% • Writing Assignment 20% • Final 65% • Bills of Rights

3. Student Bill of RightsStudents have a right to... • An opportunity to learn the basic concepts of Learning II in multiple formats (text, lecture, online). • Have their time managed wisely (not make-work activities). • Support when expectations exceed current understandings. • Contact with the instructor beyond the classroom.

4. Instructor Bill of RightsThe instructor has the right to... • Cooperation in establishing a learning forum. • Active participation from students. • Support when expectations exceed current understanding. (note it’s the same!)

5. Index • Smart Kids/ Dumb Kids: The nature of intelligence. • But they’re just not Motivated!: The nature of motivation, with self assessment. • I want hands-on, minds-on engaged learners: The nature of classroom organization. • It’s a tough school: Conflict resolution in the curriculum.

6. Intelligence • Consider any class of students you have seen in clinic… • What makes students learn at different rates? • What defines a smart student? • What defines a smart teacher? • What IS intelligence?

7. The Bell Curve The measurement of intelligence has been the greatest achievement of twentieth-century scientific psychology. Psychometricians can make a numerical estimate of a person's intelligence that remains surprisingly stable after the age of five or so, and much convergent evidence suggests that the variations of this measure of intelligence in a population are determined significantly (at least 60 percent) by inheritable factors. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Free Press.

8. The Bell Curve - Social Implications As they see it, individuals have always differed in intelligence, at least partly because of heredity, but these differences have come to matter more because social status now depends more on individual achievement. High IQ parents are choosing voluntary childlessness while others produce multiple offspring… the fear becomes... a brutal society in which "the rich and the smart" (who are increasingly the same folks) band together to isolate and perhaps even reduce the ranks of those who besmirch the social fabric.

9. The Bell Curve - an incendiary text • Scientists Statement • http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/support-bell-curve.html

10. Other Thoughts • Sternberg’s Interview with Skeptic Magazine.

11. Sternberg’s Triarchic Process(pg. 114) • Analytic Componential • Information components • Meta components (planning, selecting) • Gaining new knowledge components • Creative Experiential • Insight • Automaticity (of problem solving) • Practical Contexual • Knowing how vs knowing what • Everyday knowledge

12. Gardner’s reaction(to Bell Curve) • American Prospect Online

13. What makes for a productive worker? • Is it IQ? • Correlation with income and supervisor ratings yield only 10% variability accounted for by IQ.

14. Gardner’s reaction “Though there are seven appendices, spanning over 100 pages, and nearly 200 pages of footnotes, bibliography, and index, one element is notably missing from this tome: a report on any program of social intervention that works. For example,Herrnstein and Murray never mention Lisbeth Schorr's Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage, a book that was prompted in part by Losing Ground. Schorr chronicles a number of social programs that have made a genuine difference in education, child health service, family planning, and other lightning-rod areas of our society. And to the ranks of the programs chronicled in Schorr's book, many new names can now be added. Those who have launched Interfaith Educational Agencies, City Year, Teach for America, Jobs for the Future, and hundreds of other service agencies have not succumbed to the sense of futility and abandonment of the poor that the Herrnstein and Murray book promotes.”

15. Yeh, but how does he really feel? “It is callous to write a work that casts earlier attempts to help the disadvantaged in the least-favorable light, strongly suggests that nothing positive can be done in the present climate, contributes to an us-against-them mentality, and then posits a miraculous cure. High intelligence and high creativity are desirable. But unless they are linked to some kind of a moral compass, their possessors might best be consigned to an island of glass-bead game players, with no access to the mainland.”

16. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences(pg. 110) • Logical-mathematical • Linguistic • Musical • Spatial • Body-kinesthestic • Interpersonal • Naturalistic • Existential? (ability to ask big questions)

17. Measured IQ • Individualized tests (about 2 hours) • Stanford Binet, WISC-III, McCarthy... (p. 116) • IQ predicts school achievement • Mental Age • MA/CA * 100 • vs Deviation (from Mean) Scores • Mean = 100; SD=10 or 15 (top p. 116) • 50% above Mean • 68% within 1 SD

18. End Lecture 1 Thanks for coming!

19. Motivation Why don’t these darn kids learn!

20. Consider... • What does it mean for a student to be “engaged” in learning? • Hands-on, minds-on? • What does it look like when a student is engaged in learning? • Is motivation personal (long term) or situational (momentary)?

21. What is Motivation - definition • internal state or condition that activates behavior and gives it direction; • desire or want that energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior; • influence of needs and desires on the intensity and direction of behavior; • the arousal, direction, and persistence of behavior (Franken, 1994).

22. Where IS motivation • Trait Theories • Motivation is a stable long-term characteristic • Need to Achieve, enduring interest • State Theories • Situational interest • Changing goals • Sociohistorical • Motivation as authentic participation

23. When is Motivation extraordinary? • Pokémon Silver? • Olympic Athletes? • So what are the characteristics of motivation?

24. How do students’ personal goals affect motivation?

25. Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow • A challenging activity that requires skill • Merging of action and awareness • Clear goals • Feedback • Focus of concentration • Feeling of control (no dire consequences) • Loss of self conciousness • Transformation of time

26. Sources of Motivation • Internal • Humanistic Psych • Needs, interests • Cognitive Psych • thoughts (attributions?) • External • Behaviorism • Rewards, reinforcers, incentives

27. Locating Motivation

28. Epsitomologies related to Motivation • Empiricism • Behaviorism (Skinner) • Rationalism • Constructivism (Piaget) • Sociohistoricism • Social Constructivism (Vygotsky)

29. How do Grades Impact Motivation? • If you get good grades… • Increase motivation or relax • If you get average grades… • If you get low grades?

30. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 How motivated are you? A game of 16 questions 1 = not like me at all 5 = very much like me

31. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 Self Assessment… 1 of 6 1. I am aware of the hierarchy of motives in my life and which ones are the most important to me. 2. I am instrinsically motivated. 3. I have high expectations and standards for my success. 4. My life has many moments of flow.

32. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 Self Assessment... 2 of 6 5. I am aware of the people in my life who have motivated me the most and what it is they did to motivate me. 6. I make achievement-related attributions that emphasize effort. 7. I have mastery motivation orientation rather than helpless or performance orientation.

33. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 Self Assessment... 3 of 6 8. I am motivated to learn and succeed because of my success aspirations, not because I want to protect my self-worth or avoid failure. 9. I have high self-efficacy for many things. 10. I have high instructional self-efficacy in terms of my ability as a teacher and to manage a classroom.

34. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 Self Assessment... 4 of 6 11. I regularly set goals, plan how to reach those goals, and systematically monitor my progress toward them. 12. I set specific, proximal, and challenging goals. 13. I am a good time manager, regularly doing weekly plans, monitoring my use of time and creating “to do” lists.

35. Not like me Very like me 1 2 3 4 5 Self Assessment... 5 of 6 14. I am good at learning from my mistakes to improve my future success. 15. I don’t let anxiety or other emotions get in the way of my motivation. 16. I have a good support system for my motivation and have positive close relationships with people who can help me sustain my motivation.

36. Self Assessment... 6 of 6 • Any items you answered 3 or less on? • These are items you may want to spend some time considering.

37. Sources of Needs • Maslow’s hierachy • Behavioral External • Biological • Affective • Cognitive • Conative • Social • Spiritual

38. Behavioral Motivation • Source is external, selected by environment. • elicited by stimulus associated/connected to innately connected stimulus. • obtain desired, pleasant consequences (rewards) or escape/avoid undesired,unpleasant consequences.

39. Behaviorism Motivation • Reinforcers • Positive Rewards (primary & secondary) • External (learn to cook for the tastes) • Internal reward (learn to read for the understanding) • Negative • Punishment • Why is it called empiricism? • Assume that what is positive for one student is punishing for the next

40. Examples • Normative grades • Implicit or explicit competition • Public displays of achievement • Does the existence of external rewards lessen intrinsic (internal) motivation?

41. Great Expectations!Expectancy theoriesof Motivation

42. Teacher Expectations (external/social) • Self-fulfilling prophecy • Student self-perceptions • Ego-protecting disengagement from learning

43. Student Expectations • Self Efficacy (Bandura) • Goal Orientation (Dweck) • Performance Goals • Learning Goals

44. Affective needs • increase/decrease affective dissonance. • increase feeling good. • decrease feeling bad. • increase security of or decrease threats to self-esteem. • maintain levels of optimism and enthusiasm.

45. Bandura • Reciprocal Determinism • Observational, imitative, self-control, self-regulation

46. Cognitive needs • maintain attention to something interesting or threatening. • develop meaning or understanding. • increase/decrease cognitive disequilibrium; uncertainty. • solve a problem or make a decision. • figure something out. • eliminate threat or risk.

47. Attributions of Success • LOCUS: • Internal vs. External • STABILITY: • Temporary vs. Permanent • CONTROLLABILITY: • Ability vs. Effort

48. Int-Stable-UnContr Int-Stable-Control Int-UnStable-UnContr Int-UnStable-Control Ext-Stable-UnContr Ext-Stable-Control Ext-Unstable-UnContr Ext-Unstable-Control I have low aptitude. I never study. I was sick on test day. I didn’t study for this 1. School it too tough. Instructor is unfair! I had bad luck. My friends didn’t help. Causal attributions

49. Student Attributions:Value explanations of Motivation • Interest • Personal (Schiefele) • Individual (Renninger) • Situational (Alexander) • Attributions of success

50. Perception of their own skill Low High Low Level Of Challenge APATHY BOREDOM ANXIETY FLOW High Lepper’s Exp X Value • Lepper puts expectancies and Value together suggesting: • Motivation = Expectance for success * personal Value of goal • Lepper also describes skill X challenge level.