Understanding Motivation in Learning: Perspectives and Strategies for Educators

1. Ch 13Motivation, Teaching, and Learning

2. Motivation, Teaching, and Learning Exploring motivation What is motivation Perspective on motivation

3. Motivation • Motivation involves the processes that energize, direct, and sustain behavior.

4. Perspectives on Motivation • Different psychological perspectives explain motivation in different ways. • The behavioral perspective emphasizes external rewards and punishments as keys in determining student motivation. • Advocates of the use of incentives emphasize that they add interest or excitement to the class and direct attention toward appropriate behavior and away from inappropriate behavior.

5. Perspectives on Motivation • The humanistic perspective stresses students’ capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose their own destinies, and positive qualities. • This perspective is associated with Abraham Maslow’s beliefs that basic needs must be met before higher needs can be satisfied.

6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs • According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, individuals’ needs must be satisfied in this sequence: • Physiological :Hunger, thirst, sleep • Safety: Ensuring survival such as protection from war and crimes. • Love and belongingness: Security, affection, and attention from others. • Esteem: Feeling good about oneself. • Self actualization: Realization of one’s potential. Characteristics of self actualized individuals include being spontaneous, problem-centered rather than self-centered and creative.

7. Perspectives on Motivation • The cognitive perspective focuses on students’ competence motivation, their internal motivation to achieve, their attributions, and their beliefs that they can effectively control their environment. • The cognitive perspective stresses that students thoughts guide their motivation. • It stresses the importance of goal setting, planning and monitoring progress toward a goal • The cognitive perspective recommends that students should be given more opportunities and responsibility for controlling their own achievement outcome.

8. Perspectives on Motivation • The social perspective stresses the need for affiliation or relatedness that involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring warm, close, personal relationships. • Students need for affiliation or relatedness is reflected in their motivation to spend time with peers, their classmates, relatives and teachers. • Students in schools with caring and supportive interpersonal relationships have more positive academic attitudes and values and more satisfied with school.

9. Motivation, Teaching, and Learning Achievement Processes Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Expectations Attribution Goal-Setting, Planning, and Self-Monitoring Self-Efficacy Mastery Motivation

10. Extrinsically Motivated Students Do something to obtain something else. Are influenced by rewards and punishments. Intrinsically Motivated Students Demonstrateself- determination by doing something for its own sake. Increase motivation when they are given some personal choice. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

11. How can teachers promote intrinsic motivation? • Intrinsic motivation is enhanced when you speak to student interests. • Infuse academic instruction with content that is familiar to them and that reflects their interests. • Also, when students see the real-world significance of academic concepts, intrinsic motivation is enhanced. • Share with them how they will use the things you are teaching them. • Challenge them with activities that are appropriate at their skill level, and avoid rewards that will be perceived as controlling.

12. Types of intrinsic motivation • Self determination and personal choices: In this view, students want to believe that they are doing something because of their own will, not because of external success or rewards. • Research results indicated that students in the intrinsic motivation/self determination group ( were given opportunities to set their own goals, plan how to reach the goals and monitor their progress toward the goals) had higher achievement gains and were more likely to graduate from high school compared with a control group.

13. Types of intrinsic motivation • Optimal Experiences and Flow: MihalyCsikszentmihalyi ( 1990,1993,2000) developed ideas that are relevant to understanding intrinsic motivation) • Optimal experiences involve feelings of deep enjoyment and happiness. • The term flow describe optimal experiences in life.

14. Optimal Experiences & FlowStudents perceived level of their own skills Students perceived level of Challenge Flow occurs: • When students develop a sense of mastery and are absorbed in a state of concentration while they engage in an activity. • When students are challenged and perceive that they have a high degree of skill.

15. Types of intrinsic motivation • Interest: research on interest has focused on how interest is related to learning. Interest is specifically linked to measures of deep learning, such as recall of main ideas and responses to more difficult comprehension questions than to surface learning such as responses to simple questions and verbatim recall of text.

16. Types of intrinsic motivation • Cognitive engagement and self responsibility: Phyllis Blumenfield and her colleagues (2006) have proposed another variation of intrinsic motivation. • They emphasize the importance of creating learning environments that encourage students to become cognitively engaged and take responsibility for their learning. • The goal is to get the students to become motivated to expend the effort to persist and master ideas rather than to get the work done and make passing grades.

17. Attribution TheoryBernard Weiner Attribution theory:In their effort to make sense of their own behavior or performance, individuals are motivated to discover its underlying causes. Locus: Students who perceive their success as being due to internal factors (i.e., effort) are more likely to have higher self-esteem. Stability: If a student attributes a positive outcome to a stable cause, there is an expectation of future success. Controllability: Failure due to external factors causes anger. Failure due to internal factors may cause guilt

18. Combination of causal attributions Internal-stable uncontrollable Internal-stable controllable Internal-unstable uncontrollable Internal-unstable controllable Reasons students give for failure Low aptitude Never study Sick the day of the test Didn’t study for this particular test Causal attributions for Failure

19. Combination of causal attributions External-stable uncontrollable External-stable controllable External-unstable uncontrollable External-unstable controllable Reasons students give for failure School has tough requirements The instructor is biased Bad luck Friends failed to help Causal attributions for Failure

20. Achievement Goal Orientation • Researchers have identified mastery as one of three types of achievement orientation: mastery, helplessness and performance. • Children with a MasteryOrientation • Focus on the task rather than their ability • Have positive affect (enjoy the challenge) • Generate solution-oriented strategies that improve their performance. • Children with a HelplessOrientation • Focus on their personal inadequacies • Attribute their difficulty to lack of ability • Display negative affect such as boredom and anxiety • PerformanceOrientation • Students are concerned with the outcome rather than the process • Winning is what matters and happiness is a result of winning

21. Self-Efficacy • Self-efficacy is the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes. • Self-efficacy has much in common with mastery motivation and intrinsic motivation • Self-efficacy is the belief that I can, helplessness is the belief that I cannot • Students learn more from teachers with self-efficacy rather than from those beset by self-doubts. • Efficacious schools are pervaded by high expectations and standards for achievement.

22. Strategies for improving students self efficacy • Teach specific strategies that can improve their ability to focus on their tasks • Help students develop short- and long-term goals • Give students performance-contingent rewards • Provide students with support from positive adult and peer models • Make sure students are not overly aroused or anxious • Combine strategy training with an emphasis on goals, and give feedback to students on how their learning strategies relate to their performance • Provide students with positive adult and peer models.

23. Self-Regulation Encourage and help students … • Set both short- and long-term challenging goals • Manage time effectively, set priorities, and be organized • Monitor progress toward goals

24. Motivation, Teaching, and Learning

25. Social motives and needs affiliation • Social motives are needs and desires that are learned through experiences with the social world. • The need for affiliation is the motive to be with other people and involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring warm, close, personal relationships.

26. Social Relationships • Students relationships with parents, peers and friends have a tremendous impact on motivation. • Parents • Demographic characteristics: Parents with more education are more likely than less educated parents to be involved in their children education. They are more active participants in their children education and have intellectually stimulating materials at home. • When parents time and energy are consumed by other concerns or other people then their child’s motivation suffer. • Living in a single-parent family, having parents who are consumed by their work, and living in a large family can undercut children’s motivation

27. Childrearing practices: Hasan impact on child’s motivation. • Parenting practices that result in improved motivation and achievement are: • Knowing enough about the child to provide the right amount of challenge and support • Providing a positive emotional climate which motivates children to internalize their parents’ values and goals • Modeling motivated achievement behavior, working hard and persisting with effort at challenging tasks

28. Provision of specific experiences at home • Provision of specific experiences at home have a tremendous impact on child’s motivation such as • Providing reading materials and reading to children. • Children’s skills and work habits are among the best predictors of academic motivation and performance. • Emphasizing academic achievement or sports and providing opportunities and resources for children to participate in activities are important factors that affect achievement and continuing education in adolescence.

29. Peers • Peers: Peers can affect a student’s motivation through • Social Comparison • Social competence and motivation • Peer co-learning • Peer-group influence

30. Teachers

31. Social Relationships Motivation to Achieve Teachers optimize achievement when they provide challenging tasks in a supportive environment. Parents should provide the right amount of challenge in a positive environment and model achievement behavior Peers with high achievement standards will support student achievement in others.

32. Sociocultural Contexts

33. Males Have higher competence beliefs in math and sports Are more rambunctious Receive more teacher attention, yet receive lower grades List more career options Females Have higher competence beliefs for English, reading, and social activities Often experience conflicts between gender roles and achievement Are more compliant, get less teacher attention, by middle school have lower self-esteem Motivation and Gender

34. Motivation, Teaching, and Learning Students with Achievement Problems Students Who Are Low-Achieving and Have Low Expectations for Success Students Who Are Uninterested or Alienated Students Who Protect Their Self-Worth by Avoiding Failure Students Who Are Perfectionists Students with High Anxiety Students Who Procrastinate

35. Nonperformance versus procrastination • Nonperformance and procrastination are strategies students engage in that are designed to “protect” their self-worth. • Nonperformance refers to a protective strategy where a student avoids the possibility of failure by not engaging in tasks. • Procrastination involves putting off doing something until the last minute, making it nearly impossible to complete a task in a thorough way. This strategy deflects attention away from the possibility that they are incompetent.

36. Failure syndrome • Failure syndrome refers to the belief that one lacks the ability to succeed, and therefore one gives up easily when confronted with an obstacle.

37. Students with Achievement Problems Protection of Self-Worth by Avoiding Failure Guide setting of realistic goals, strengthen link between effort and self-worth, and encourage positive self-perceptions Low Achievers with Low Expectations Provide reassurance and cognitive retraining, and reward effort and progress toward realistic goals High Anxiety Modify negative thoughts by engaging students in more positive, task-focused thoughts

38. Procrastinators Encourage acknowledgement of problem, assist in time management and task analysis, and teach behavioral and cognitive strategies for dealing with problem Perfectionists Identify cost/benefits, decrease self-criticism, set realistic goals and time limits, and encourage acceptance of criticism Students with Achievement Problems

39. Hard-to-Reach, Low-Achieving Students • Develop positive teacher-student relationships • Make school more interesting • Teach strategies to make learning enjoyable • Consider including a mentor

40. Strategies for reaching uninterested or alienated students • On the basis of Brophy’s research, a teacher should: • Work on developing a positive relationship with the student • Make school more intrinsically interesting for the student by finding the student’s interests and including those interests in assignments. • Teach the student strategies for making academic work more enjoyable • Enlist the aid of a mentor in the community or an older student whom the uninterested or alienated student will respect.

41. Addressing achievement problems involves identifying the specific problem and getting students to acknowledge it. Then, there are a variety of strategies teachers can implement to help students reduce or eliminate these problems: • Efficacy training : Efficacy training seeks to improve students’ efficacy perceptions or belief in their ability to master a given task. The primary emphasis of efficacy training is Improving students’ academic confidence.

42. Attribution and achievement orientation retraining: Attribution retraining seeks to change students’ beliefs about the causality of their success and the reason behind their performance. • Strategy training: Strategy training seeks to provide students with the learning strategies necessary to succeed. The primary emphasis is improving students’ domain- and task-specific skills

43. Realistic goal setting: Goals should be specific, proximal and challenging. Students can set both long-term (distal) and short-term (proximal) goals, however short term goals are very important. Goals should also be challenging. Goals that are easy to reach generate little interest or effort. However goals should optimally be matched to the students skill level. If goals are unrealistically high, the results will be repeated failures that lower the students efficacy.

44. Expectations: Students expectations for success and value they place on what they want to achieve influence their motivation. Teachers expectations have a powerful influence on students’ motivation and achievement. Teachers often have higher expectations for high-ability students than low ability students. It is important for teachers to monitor their expectations and to have high expectations for all students.

45. Cognitive interventions: Students anxiety increases as they get older and face more evaluation, social comparison and failure. Cognitive programs that replace students’ self damaging thoughts with positive constructive thoughts have been more effective than relaxation programs in benefiting student achievement.

46. Values and purpose: Very few students engage in purposeful reflection about what they want to do with their lives. Parents and teachers need to ask students more questions especially “why” questions to encourage them to think more deeply about what their purpose is.

47. Teachers would establish opportunities for communities of learning. Peer tutoring, collaborative projects and writing, and cooperative learning are some examples. In general, establishing a community atmosphere for the classroom as a whole will provide students with a supportive network necessary to optimize learning.

48. Teachers can improve students’ efficacy by: teaching students specific strategies. helping students to set short-term goals. providing support. monitoring student anxiety. exposing students to positive models.

49. Pretask Several variables influence students’ incoming motivation. Students enter tasks with various goals such as learn the material, perform well, be the first one to finish. Students enter tasks with various expectations. This may involve capabilities ( self efficacy and perceptions of the consequences of learning ( outcome expectations. Students have differing perceptions of value or perceived importance of learning.

50. PretaskCon’t Students differ in their affects associated with learning. They may be excited, anxious or feel no particular emotion. These affects may relate closely to students’ needs. Social support in students lives will vary. It includes the types of assistance from teachers, peers and parents. Learning often requires that others provide time, money, effort, transportation and so forth.