Motivation in Education
Psychological hedonism
Avoid pain
Obtain pleasure
But what gives pleasure or pain?
Need-drive theories
Need - states of deficiency
Drives - aroused by needs
Needs satisfied produces - pleasure
Needs unsatisfied produces - unpleasant feeling
Physiological needs - tissue changes
Psychological needs - mental functioning.
Arousal
- Harder the task - greater the level of arousal required. Too little or too much - inferior performance
- People regulate their level of arousal for the task in hand.
If lessons delivered in dull way then the level of arousal of the students
is too low.
High arousal - Test Anxiety
Decrease in performance.
Highly anxious students need highly structured instructional approaches
e.g. programmed learning, or teacher directed lessons where no student
interaction is expected.
Change student's attitude about personal competence.
Focus on task at hand, rather than worry.
Learning / Thinking strategies.
Teachers can give more time for assignments and tests
Teach time management strategies.
Change difficulty level of assignments and tests
Match to students skill levels.
Moral of the story
Teachers must not bore their students, nor frighten the wits out of them by continually referring to tests.
Humanistic motives
External rewards
(as in behaviourism)
decreases intrinsic (internal) motivation.
Praise increases intrinsic motivation. (Fair & Silvestri, 1992)
Maslow's theory of human needs and self-actualisation (1970)
Competence motivation - R.W.White (1959)
People are driven by a desire to be competent.
(Especially true of species with few innate behaviours)
Explains children's drive for mastery - curiosity and information-seeking
behaviour.
Developed by Bandura (1986) - Self-efficacy theory
Humanistic teacher
Personal development of students
Self-actualization
positive feelings about the self,
personal effectiveness and competence Self-efficacy)
Cognitive views of motivation
Self-Efficacy (Bandura 1986)
If self-efficacy high then students do better. (i.e. If students think they are able to do something, then they perform the task better)
Influences on self-efficacy
- Enactive - habitually successful - but have to attribute success to own ability rather than luck.
- Vicarious - judge our performance by looking at others - especially peers
- Persuasory - Others express their confidence in a person's ability
- Emotive - Level of arousal, sleep or panic.
Schunk (1984) Children and adults do not undertake tasks in
which they feel they will fail in.
If we think we can do something, then we try harder compared with when we think
we can't do something.
Zimmerman, Bandura and Martinez-Pons (1992) -
Low self-efficacy students set low goals.
Goals - are important - sense of satisfaction or failure can result.
Low self-efficacy - leads to students experiencing low self-esteem.
Coopersmith (1967) - positive self-concepts related to success in school and
interpersonal affairs.
Attribution theory (Weiner 1986)
Locus of control
|
Attribution Theory |
||
|
|
Internal |
External |
|
Unstable |
Effort |
Luck |
|
Stable |
Ability |
Difficulty |
Applies to children over 9, because they
do not really understand the difference between Ability and Effort.
Before then, children equate effort with intelligence. The harder you work -
the more intelligent you will be.
In practice
Some children have a high need to succeed
Others fear failure
Classroom Applications of Cognitive views
Increase Achievement needs
Students invited to take risks
Make predictions about their performance
modify predictions on basis of feedback.
Earn or lose points or tokens depending upon performance
Objectives
Make use of information about previous
performance
Set realistic goals
Assume personal responsibility for performance
(Alschuler 1972) - reports success.
Changing Attributions
Changing external orientation to internal.
Remember - Internal orientation -
- higher achievement
- more realistic goals
Wittrock (1986) - encourage students to make
more effort.
Success and failure should be attributed to effort.
McCombs (1982) - teach cognitive strategies and metacognitive skills.
Knowledge about one's own cognitive strategies
Main Point
Stress student's personal responsibility for performance
Changing Achievement Goals
Change classroom practice so that 'learning
goals' are emphasised more than 'performance goals'.
Ames (1992) - tasks need variety, challenge, meaningfulness.
Tasks - short-term goals are best. If personally involving then students are
less likely to compare themselves with others.
Evaluation
Bad
Using evaluation procedures that emphasise
ability and comparison with others.
Emphasising correctness and memorisation
performance oriented
Good
Any evaluation system that emphasises learning is better
If all children in a class are given
different tasks - less opportunity for them to compare themselves with others.
Small group work is better in this respect.
Should compare students current performance with his own previous performance.
Authority
Teachers should give tasks that allow the
student some autonomy - foster mastery orientation.
Teacher's that over-control tasks encourage performance goals.
Final points
Kegan (1982)
Most of our lives we struggle to be meaningful - to mean something to others.
If we mean nothing that is a measure of our personal worth.
Web
site
http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/leonb/motivation.htm
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