Notes to accompany chapter 10 of Lefrançois' Psychology for Teaching

Motivation in Education Part 2

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
Any evaluation system that emphasises learning is better

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.

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.

Return to Motivation part 1

Lecture notes