Notes to accompany chapter 10 of Lefrançois' Psychology for Teaching

Motivation in Education

Overview

Instinct theory
Psychological hedonism
Arousal

Humanistic approaches

Behaviouristic approaches

extrinsic rewards/punishments
Use of praise

Maslow's humanistic needs hierarchy

Cognitive theories Bandura - Self-efficacy
Weiner's attribution theory
Dweck - entity theory
Children with need for achievement tend to have internal locus of control accept personal responsibility
Achievement orientation - modified by inviting children to:

Attribution-changing programs
Cognitively oriented, motivation-driven classroom interventions
1 Tasks

2 evaluation - avoid social comparisons
3 Authority - student should have meaningful autonomy.

Motivation

Instincts

Human Instincts

Bernard (1924) listed 6,000, but this can bring about circular arguments.
Human's make love - instinct
Why make love? - Instinct
How do we know that instinct exists? - because humans make love.
Imprinting - Critical period - Lorenz (1952) Greylag geese followed him.
Critical period - in humans - Bowlby (1982) (See Hodges and Tizard)

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

  1. Harder the task - greater the level of arousal required. Too little or too much - inferior performance
  2. 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

  1. Enactive - habitually successful - but have to attribute success to own ability rather than luck.
  2. Vicarious - judge our performance by looking at others - especially peers
  3. Persuasory - Others express their confidence in a person's ability
  4. 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.

All the advantages? They'll fail without self-esteem

Adult success depends heavily on your childhood self-image.

Education Unlimited

Ben Summerskill
Sunday September 24, 2000
The Observer

Richard Branson and Cherie Booth were destined to be successful from the age of ten. Childhood self-esteem can overwhelm academic disadvantage or social deprivation in determining future earnings power, according to major new research.

The research will cast serious doubt over the recent narrow focus of education experts on academic achievement in primary schools.

'There is now clear evidence that children with higher self-esteem at age 10 get as much of a kick to their adult earning power as those with equivalent higher maths or reading ability,' said Leon Feinstein of the influential Centre for Economic Performance.

Parents' interest in the education of their child and whether they exhibit hostility to the child are also 'hugely important'.

A father's hostility had as much influence as the father's own academic performance.

Feinstein and his colleagues tracked children for 30 years using the British Cohort Study, which interviewed the parents of all babies born in the UK in the first week of April 1970. The children were subsequently questioned at 5, 10, 16, 26 and as they reached their 30th birthdays earlier this year.

Self-esteem was monitored at 10 by asking the children a series of questions, such as 'Do you think other children often say nasty things about you?' and 'Are there lots of things about yourself that you would like to change?'

Boys in particular who were anti-social and had low self-esteem at 10 are at greater risk of unemployment in early adulthood.

Young boys with higher self-esteem are less likely to be unemployed in later life, and for shorter periods.

Bright children often have higher self-esteem, as do some from more affluent backgrounds. But the study compared children from similar backgrounds and still found that those who were psychologically well-balanced at 10 were now doing much better than their peers. 'For example, in the case of two children from families with low income and with parents who left school at the minimum leaving age,' said Feinstein, 'the child with higher self-esteem at age ten will earn more, even if the children have the same scores in maths and reading.'

The research also found, surprisingly, that it is not unusual for children to have high academic achievement and low self-esteem, leading to significant later under-performance in the jobs market. A spokesman for the British Association for Counselling said: 'Discouragement for children doesn't come only from crude parental hostility at home; it can just be resentment or the constant feeling that they're making you tired. Children pick that up.

'It isn't just less well-off children who suffer. All too often you can ask affluent parents who the important people in their child's life are - teachers, friends and so on - and they haven't a clue. There's nothing so deprived as a child with a nanny and a pot of cash.

'We've been missing the point that parenting skills in this country, like many other craft skills, are on the wane.'

The Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson, the son of a judge, came from an affluent and supportive upper middle- class family.

However, he always underperformed academically.

He went on to become one of the 20 richest men in Britain. Cherie Booth grew up in a relatively poor family with little academic background but significant emotional support from her mother Gale.

She is now one of Britain's most dist-inguished barristers, reportedly earning £250,000 a year.

A string of other highly successful people underperformed at school but, boosted by self-confidence from an early age, have become successful in their chosen careers.

Alan Sugar, Lynne Franks and Max Clifford all had limited conventional academic success but supportive families and developed social skills at an early age.

'There may now be grounds for arguing that school performance should be assessed not only in terms of maths, reading or science scores but also in terms of the success or failure of helping children to develop in other ways,' said Feinstein.

'Schools are geared to helping pupils achieve good key stage and exam scores.

'They are not institutions created to help individual children to achieve their psychological growth.'

ben.summerskill@observer.co.uk

Four success stories against the odds
Cherie Blair
Highly successful QC, wife of Prime Minister, mother of four children.
In spite of ... A difficult and poor childhood, eldest of seven daughters, father who left the family when she was seven.

Richard Branson
Boss of Virgin business empire, knighted, has set his sights on running the lottery, has own Caribbean island.
In spite of... Mediocre qualifications from his public school (Stowe).
Lynne Franks
Public relations guru immortalised in TV sitcom, author, mother of two children.
In spite of... No formal education - she admits that she threw her energies into arranging school social events.

Damien Hirst
Artist, winner of the Turner Prize, director of pop videos, co-owner of Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill.
In spite of...scraping an E in A-level art and being rejected by St Martin's School of Art.

© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000


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