Motivation (1)

1. Motivation (1) EDU 330: Educational Psychology Daniel Moos

2. Overview Today: • The Behavioral View of Motivation • The Social Cognitive View of Motivation • Other Cognitive Views of Motivation Next Class • Expectancy X Value Theory • The Humanistic View of Motivation • The Role of Self-Perceptions in Motivation

3. The Behavioral View of Motivation • Students are motivated to complete a task by the desire to obtain an externally provided reinforcer (extrinsic reinforcement) • Limitations of the Behavioral View  Temporary changes (in absence of reward)  Materialistic View  Undermining Effect with Intrinsic motivation

4. The Social Cognitive View of Motivation • Two factors that influence motivation:  The models to which people are exposed  The strength of one’s self-efficacy for a particular task • The Power of Persuasive Models  Students who observe an admired model receive reinforcement may be motivated to exhibit the same behavior because they expect to receive the same reinforcement (vicarious reinforcement)

5. Other Cognitive Views of Motivation Self-determination theory: Process of deciding how to act on one’s environment (Ryan & Deci, 2000) Competence Ability to function effectively in the environment Feedback (“Your problem-solving skills are improving. Good work!”) Independence and ability to alter the environment Teacher asks for student input on rules, encourages students to set & monitor goals Autonomy Teacher spends time with her students before & after school, helping them w/ homework, etc The feeling of being connected to others in one’s environment Relatedness

6. Other Cognitive Views of Motivation • Beliefs about the Nature of Cognitive Ability  Entity Theorists – Believe that intelligence is like a thing, or entity, that has fixed characteristics  Incremental Theorists – Believe that intelligence can be gradually improved by adding to and refining thinking skills  Developmental trajectory

7. Attributions: Explanations that people tend to make to explain success or failure Other Cognitive Views of Motivation Controllable Uncontrollable Internal Effort Luck Difficulty of Test Choice of Study Environments External

8. How do individuals typically attribute their success and/or failure? Interpret successes and failures in a manner that is most likely to maintain positive self-image Attribution Theory: Introduction (II) Success/Failure Success Failure Controllable Uncontrollable Internal Effort Luck Difficulty of Test Choice of Study Environments External

9. Attribution Theory: Introduction (III) Attribution Locus Stability Controllability Inherited ability internal stable uncontrollable Personality internal stable uncontrollable Effort internal unstable controllable Task Difficulty external stable uncontrollable Luck external unstable uncontrollable

10. Attribution Theory: Case Study

11. “I am competent” AND “I worked hard” NOTbeneficial to completely attribute to ability (2) Students most likely to persist after failing if they attribute failure to a lack of appropriate effort (3) Scaffold student’s understanding of effort Students often confuse spending time doing ineffective activities with effort Students often have incorrect conceptions of their understanding (metacognition) (4) Should assessment include evaluations of effort? Attribution Theory: Strategies