Educational Psychology 302

1. Educational Psychology302 Session 10 Motivation

2. Motivation Definition: Forces which energize, direct, and sustain behavior Situated Motivation: The influence of the ___________ to motivate a person to behave in particular ways.

3. Motivation • _________—motivated by external factors • Intrinsic—factors inherent in the task being performed • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs • Deficiency needs prior to growth need • Almost always yields better outcomes in terms of learning and understanding

4. Self-Actualization –Flow? • Flow: A state of optimal experience characterized by total concentration and absorption in a challenging activity that engenders a sense of control, interest, enjoyment, even exhilaration. Csikszentmihalyi, 1990

5. Elements of Flow • One has clear goals every step of the way • One gets immediate feedback for one’s actions • Balance between challenge and skills • Action and awareness are merged • Distractions are excluded from consciousness

6. Elements of Flow (cont.) • One is not worried about failure • Self-consciousness disappears • One’s sense of time is distorted • The activity becomes autoelic (an end in itself)

7. Teachers can Promote Flow by: • Assigning challenging task that involve novelty and discovery • Emphasizing intrinsic rewards • Minimize pressures related to competition, grades, rules

8. Influences on Motivation • Self-________—The extent to which a student believes they are capable of successfully completing a task. • Self-Determination—The extent to which a student believes they can make choices regarding the direction of their lives and choice of activities.

9. Students: Process information for long-term storage Realize learning is a process trying hard and working through temporary setbacks Most benefit from classroom experience Students: Avoid challenging tasks Shoot for only minimal performance outcomes Motivation to Learn: Meaningfulness of Activities Learning Goals vs. Performance Goals

10. Encouraging Student Motivation to Learn • Present subject matter to in ways that relates to the student’s current and future interests (hot cognition) • Show personal enthusiasm for the subject • Demonstrate to students that you believe they are genuinely interested in the subject and are motivated to learn • Focus students’ attention on learning goals

11. Motivation: Affiliation Definition: The desire to like and be liked by others, to seek out friendly relationships Learning Implication: Find ways to help students learn subject matter and meet affiliation needs at the same time Strategies: Role play, debates, cooperative learning, competitions among two or more teams . . .

12. Motivation: Approval Definition: A desire to gain acceptance and positive judgments from other people Learning Implication: Students may be engage in a task to please an authority figure Strategies: Praise students frequently for the things they do well keeping in mind the balance of approval student desire from peers as opposed to teachers.

13. Motivation: Anxiety Definition: Feeling of uneasiness about an event because you do not know about the outcome • State vs. Trait Anxiety • Facilitating vs. Debilitating Anxiety Learning Implication: Highly anxious students tend to achieve at lower levels that those at which they are capable of achieving

14. Strategies for Addressing Student Anxiety • Set realistic expectations for performance • Challenge students within their “zone of _______ ________” tasks within their reach • Teach learning strategies • Provide supplementary resources • Provide feedback about specific behaviors

15. Attributions • Definition: explanations of success or failure • Locus • Stability • Controllability • Influencing factors on attribution: past successes and failures, rewards and punishment, expectations, messages about success or failure (earned or unearned?)

16. Attribute accomplishments to own abilities and efforts Seek challenging goals, seek challenges, persist in failure Achieve better over the long run. Attribute successes to to outside and uncontrollable factors Students generally underestimate their own ability Students set easy goals, avoid challenges, and respond to failure in counterproductive ways. Mastery LearnedOrientation vs. Helplessness