Educational Psychology Chapter 12: Motivation in Learning and Teaching

According to Bernar Weiner, most of the attributed causes for success or failures can be characterized in terms of 3 dimensions:

1. Locus. 2. Stability. 3. Controllability.

4 main goal orientations

1. Mastery: task/learning. 2. Performance: ability/ego/looking good. 3. Work-avoidance. 4. Social.

Learned helplessness appears to cause 3 types of deficits:

1. Motivational. 2. Cognitive. 3. Affective.

4 broad areas of motivation that are useful for teaching:

1. Needs. 2. Goals. 3. Beliefs. 4. Emotional "hot" side of motivation - interests, curiosity, emotions, and anxiety.

There are 2 kinds of interests:

1. Personal / individual. 2. Situational / The trait and state distinction.

When students face stressful situations such as tests, they can use 3 kinds of coping strategies:

1. Problem-focused self-regulating learning strategies. 2. Emotional management. 3. Avoidance.

4 basic conditions that must be met for every student and in every classroom in order for motivational strategies to succeed:

1. The classroom must be relatively organized and free from constant interruptions and disruptions. 2. The teacher must be a patient, supportive person who never embarrasses the students because they made mistakes. 3. The work must be challenging, but reasonable. 4. The learning tasks must be authentic.

Avoidance strategies

Include avoiding studying or homework by finding another project.

Problem-focused self-regulating learning strategies

Include planning a study schedule, borrowing good notes, or finding a protected place to study.

Motivation

Internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behavior.

Cognitive theorists empasize

Intrinsic motivation

The greatest motivational problems arise when students attribute failures to

stable, uncontrollable causes.

Humanistic interpretation

Approach to motivation that emphasizes personal freedom, choice, self-determination, and striving for personal growth.

Personal / individual interests

Are more long-lasting aspects of the person, such as an enduring tendency to be attracted to or to enjoy subjects such as languages, history, or mathematics, or activities such as sports, music, or films. Have more positive attitudes toward schooling.

Situational interests

Are more short-lived aspects of the activity, text, or materials that catch and keep the student's attention.

Teachers who hold entity views

Are quicker to form judgements about students and slower to modify their opinions when confronted with contradictory evidence.

Self-handicapping

Students may engage in behavior that blocks their own success in order to avoid testing their true ability.

Anxiety interferes with learning and test performance at 3 points:

1. Focusing attention. 2. Learning. 3. Testing.

Task value has 4 components

1. Importance. 2. Interest. 3. Utility. 4. Cost.

To ensure genuine progress

1. Begin work at the students' level and move in small steps. 2. Make sure learning goals are clear, specific, and possible to reach in the near future. 3. Stress self-comparison, not comparison with others. 4. Communicate to students that academic ability is improvable. 5. Model good problem solving.

5 general theories/views of motivation:

1. Behavioral. 2. Humanistic. 3. Cognitive. 4. Social cognitive. 5. Sociocultural.

There are 3 goal structures:

1. Cooperative. 2. Competitive. 3. Individualistic.

4 main reasons why goal setting improves performance:

1. Direct attention to the task at hand and away from distractions. 2. Energize effort. 3. Increase persistence. 4. Promote the development of new knowledge and strategies when old strategies fall short.

3 additional factors that make goal setting in the classroom effective:

1. Feedback. 2. Goal framing. 3. Goal acceptance.

Teachers have 3 major goals to get students motivated to learn:

1. To get students productively involved with the work of the class; to catch their interest and to create a state of motivation to learn. 2. The longer-term goal of developing in students enduring individual interests and the trait of being motivated to learn so they will be able to educate themselves for the rest of their lives. 3. For the students to be cognitively engaged - to think deeply about what they study / to be thoughtful.

When being or growth needs are met,

A person's motivation does not cease; instead, it increases to seek further fulfillment.

Mastery goal

A personal intention to improve abilities and learn, no matter how performance suffers. The point is to learn, now matter how awkward you appear. The quality of a student's engagement in the task is higher.

Performance goal

A personal intention to seem competent or perform well in the eyes of others.

Motivate to learn

A students' tendency to find academic activities meaningful and worthwhile and to try to benefit from them.

Social goals

A wide variety of needs and motivations to be connected to others or part of a group.

In cognitive theories people are viewed as:

Active and curious, searching for information to solve personally relevant problems.

Reward

An attractive object or event supplied as a consequence of a behavior.

Incentive

An object or event that encourages or discourages behavior.

Goal

An outcome or attainment an individual strives to accomplish.

Emotional management strategies

Attempts to reduce the anxious feelings, for example, by using relaxation exercises or describing the feelings to a friend.

Performance avoid

Avoid looking dumb

Entity view of ability

Belief that ability is a fixed characteristic that cannot be changed.

Incremental view of abilty

Belief that ability is a set of skills that can be changed.

Self-efficacy

Beliefs about personal competence in a particular situation.

Epistemological beliefs

Beliefs about the structure, stability, and certainty of knowledge, and how knowledge is best learned.

Emotions can effect learning by

Changing brain dopamine levels that influence long-term memory and by directing attention toward one aspect of the situation.

Attribution theories

Descriptions of how individuals' explanations justifications, and excuses influence their motivation and behavior.

DEAR time

Drop Everything And Read

Expectancy x value theories

Explanations of motivation that emphasize individuals' EXPECTATIONS for success combined with their VALUING of the goal. Characterization of social cognitive explanation of motivation.

Mastery avoid

Fear misunderstanding

Self-actualization

Fulfilling one's potential.

Anxiety

General uneasiness, a feeling of tension.

Legitimate peripheral participation

Genuine involvement in the work of the group, even if your abilities are undeveloped and contributions are small.

Bounded choice

Giving students a range of options that set valuable tasks for them, but also allow them to follow personal interests.

Cognitive autonomy support

Giving students opportunities to discuss different cognitive strategies for learning, approaches to solving problems, or positions on an issue. * The most important kind of autonomy support teachers can provide students.

Locus

Location of cause - internal or external to the person.

Deficiency needs

Maslow's four lower-level needs, which must be satisfied first. 1. Need for survival. 2. Need for safety. 3. Need for Belonging. 4. Need for self-esteem.

Hierarchy of needs

Maslow's model of seven levels of human needs, from basic physiological requirements to the need for self-actualization.

Being needs / Growth needs

Maslow's three higher-level needs, sometimes called growth needs. 1. Need for intellectual achievement. 2. Need for aesthetic appreciation. 3. Need for self-actualization. Can never be completely filled.

Problem-based learning

Methods that provide students with realistic problems that don't necessarily have right answers.

Extrinsic motivation

Motivation created by external factors such as rewards and punishments. Not really interested in the activity for it's own sake; only care about what it will gain us. Fully determined by others.

Costs of tasks

Negative consequences that might follow from doing the task such as not having time to do other things or looking awkward as your perform the task.

Goal orientations

Patters of beliefs about goals related to achievement in school.

Sociocultural views of motivation

Perspectives that emphasize participation, identities, and interpersonal relations within communities of practice.

Arousal

Physical and psychological reactions causing a person to be alert, attentive, wide awake.

Students who hold an entity, or unchangeable, view of intelligence tend to:

Set performance avoid goals to avoid looking bad in the eyes of others.

Behavioral motivation

Source of motivation: Extrinsic. Important influences: Reinforcers, rewards, incentives, and punishers. Key Theorists: Skinner

Social cognitive motivation

Source of motivation: Intrinsic & Extrinsic. Important Influences: Goals, expectations, intentions, self-efficacy. Key Theorists: Locke & Latham, Bandura

Cognitive motivation

Source of motivation: Intrinsic. Important Influences: Beliefs, attributions for success and failure, expectations. Key Theorists: Weiner, Graham.

Sociocultural motivation

Source of motivation: Intrinsic. Important Influences: Engaged participation in learning communities; maintaining identity through participation in activities of group. Key Theorists: Lave, Wenger.

Humanistic motivation

Source of motivation: Intrinsic. Important influences: Need for self-esteem, self-fulfillment, and self-determination. Key Theorists: Maslow, Deci

Amygdala

Stimulation to this small area of the brain seems to trigger emotional reactions such as the "fight or flight" response.

Individualistic goal structure

Students believe that their own attempt to reach a goal is not related to other students' attempts to reach the goal.

Cooperative goal structure

Students believe their goal is attainable only if other students will also reach the goal. Best when task involves complex learning and problem-solving skills.

Competitive goal structure

Students believe they will reach their goal if and only if other students do not reach the goal.

Failure-avoiding students

Students who avoid failure by sticking to what they know, by not taking risks, or by claiming not to care about their performance.

Failure-accepting students

Students who believe their failures are due to low ability and there is little they can do about it.

Work-avoidant learners

Students who don't want to learn or to look smart, but just want to avoid work.

Mastery-oriented students

Students who focus on learning goals because they value achievement and see ability as improvable.

Cognitive evaluation theory

Suggests that events affect motivation through the individual's perception of the events as controlling behavior or providing information. All events have 2 aspects: Controlling and Informational.

Self-determination theory

Suggests that we all need to feel competent and capable in our interactions in the world, to have some choices and sense of control over our lives, and to be connected to others - to belong to a social group.

TARGET: Identifying 6 areas where teachers make decisions that can influence student motivation to learn:

T: Task that students are asked to do. A: Autonomy or authority students are allowed in working. R: Recognition for accomplishments. G: Grouping practices. E: Evaluation procedures. T: Time in the classroom.

Authentic task

Tasks that have some connection to real-life problems the students will face outside the classroom.

Block scheduling

Teachers work in teams to plan larger blocks of class time

Teachers who hold incremental views

Tend to set mastery goals and seek situations in which students can improve their skills, because improvement means getting smarter. Failure is not devastating; it simply indicates more work is needed.

Utility value

The contribution of a task to meeting one's goals.

The need for relatedness

The desire to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with others. Related to the sense of belonging.

Need for autonomy

The desire to have our own wishes, rather than external rewards or pressures, determine our actions. Is central to self-determination.

Interest or intrinsic value

The enjoyment a person gets from a task.

Learned helplessness

The expectation, based on previous experiences with a lack of control, that all one's efforts will lead to failure.

Importance/Attainment value

The importance of doing well on a task; how success on the task meets personal needs.

Locus of causality

The location - internal or external - of the cause of behavior.

When deficiency needs are satisfied,

The motivation for fulfilling them decreases.

Intrinsic motivation

The natural human tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we pursue personal interests and exercise our capabilities. No need of incentives or punishments because the activity itself is satisfying and rewarding. Self determined.

Goal structure

The way students relate to others who are also working toward a particular goal.

Academic tasks

The work the student must accomplish, including the content covered and the mental operations required.

Stability

Whether the cause of the event is the same across time and in different situations.

Controllability

Whether the person can control the cause.