Chapter 13

Educational Psychology

Exploring Motivation
What is Motivation?!

Motivation: processes that energise, direct and sustain behaviour

Exploring Motivation
Perspectives on Motivation! Behavioural Perspective

rewards and punishments Incentives: positive or negative stimuli or events that can motivate a students behaviour.

Exploring Motivation
Perspectives on Motivation! Humanistic Perspective

Humanistic perspective: view that stresses students capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose their destiny and positive qualities Maslows Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological, Safety, Love, Esteem and Self-Actualisation Self-Actualisation: the highest and most elusive of Maslows needs (possible only after the lower needs have been met)

Exploring Motivation
Perspectives on Motivation! Cognitive Perspective

focuses on ideas as students internal motivation to achieve their attributions, their beliefs that they can effectively control their environment Competence motivation: people are motivated to deal effectively with their environment, to master their world, and to process information efciently

people do things because they are internally motivated to interact effectively with the environment

Exploring Motivation
Perspectives on Motivation! Social Perspective

Need for Afliation/Relatedness: motive to be securely connected with other people

establishing, maintaining, and restoring warm, close personal relationships

students in schools with caring and supportive interpersonal relationships have more positive academic attitudes and values and are more satised with school

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation!

Extrinsic Motivation: doing something to obtain something else (inuenced by external incentives) Intrinsic Motivation: internal motivation to do something for its own sake When goals are framed extrinsically, students show a lower level of independent motivation and lower persistence on achievement tasks students are more motivated to learn when they are given choices praise also enhance students intrinsic motivation

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Self-determination and Personal choice

Students want to believe that they are doing something because of their own will (Richard Ryan and Edward Deci (2009) teachers should create circumstances for students to engage in self-determination as autonomy-supportive teachers students internal motivation and intrinsic interest in school tasks increase when students have some choice and some opportunities to take personal responsibility for their learning

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Optimal Experiences and Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: optimal experiences are feelings of deep enjoyment and happiness, ow ow occurs when people develop a sense of mastery and are absorbed in a state of concentration while they engage in challenges that are neither too difcult nor easy

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Interest

individual interest vs situational interest (generated by task activity) interest is linked to measures of deep learning; recall of main ideas and responses to more difcult comprehension questions rather than to surface learning Authentic tasks approximate the real world or real life that can spark students interest and curiosity integrating technology into the classroom can increase students motivation to learn and engage in learning

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Cognitive Engagement and Self-Responsibility

creating learning environments that encourage students to become cognitively engaged and take responsibility for their learning goal: get students to become motivated to expend the effort to persist and master ideas rather than doing just enough work to make a passing grade

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation

classroom rewards: (1) incentive to engage in tasks (goal is to control the students behaviour, (2) convey information about mastery Point system: the points provide information about their capabilities (rewards that convey information about students mastery can increase intrinsic motivation by increasing their sense of competence) verbal rewards can enhance their intrinsic motivation

Achievement Processes
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation! Developmental Shifts in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

students intrinsic motivation decreases as they move up the level

why? school grading practices reinforce external motivation orientation students compare themselves more with others person-environment t: lack of t between middle/junior school environment needs of young adolescents produces increasingly negative self-evaluations and attitudes toward school

but if students who were intrinsically motivated, they did better academically than those who were extrinsically motivated

Achievement Processes
Attribution!

Attribution Theory: individuals are motivated to discover the underlying causes of their own performance and behaviour. Attributions are perceived causes of outcomes Bernard Winer: (1) locus; whether the cause is internal or external to the actor, (2) stability; the extent to which the cause remains the same or changes, (3) controllability; the extent to which the individual can control the cause

Achievement Processes
Attribution!

Helping students who have internal attribution-stableuncontrollable:

concentrate on the task at hand rather than worrying about failing cope with failures by retracing their steps to discover their mistake attribute their failures to lack of effort rather than lack of ability

Achievement Processes
Mastery Motivation and Mindset! Mastery Motivation

Valanne Henderson and Carol Dweck: children display (1) mastery motivation are task-oriented (focus on ability and learning strategy rather than outcome). (2) helpless orientation (attribute their difculty to lack of ability) Children with mastery orientation instruct themselves to pay attention, think carefully and remember strategies that worked for them. They feel challenged and excited by difcult tasks. Winning isnt everything Children with performance orientation focus on winning rather than achievement outcome, believe that success results from winning. skill development and self-efcacy take a backseat to winning

Achievement Processes
Mastery Motivation and Mindset! Mindset

importance of children developing a mindset: cognitive view individuals develop for themselves (1) xed mindset believe that their qualities cant change and improve through effort. similar to helpless orientation (2) growth mindset believe that their qualities can change and improve through their effort. similar to mastery motivation

Achievement Processes
Self-Efcacy!

Self-efcacy: can master a situation and produce positive outcomes Dale Schunk: self-efcacy inuences a students choice of activities. Students with low self-efcacy avoid many learning tasks (esp. challenging ones). Students with high self-efcacy will eagerly approach challenging learning tasks

Achievement Processes
Goal Setting, Planning and Self-monitoring! Long-term and Short-term goals

When students set goals and plans, their commitments should be in bite-size chunks

Achievement Processes
Goal Setting, Planning and Self-monitoring! Challenging Goals

challenging goal is a commitment to selfimprovement strong interest and involvement in activities is sparked by challenges

Achievement Processes
Goal Setting, Planning and Self-monitoring! Personal Goals

develop personal goals about desired and undesired future circumstances can be a key aspect of students motivation for coping and dealing with lifes challenges and opportunities

Achievement Processes
Goal Setting, Planning and Self-monitoring! Developmental Changes and Goal-setting

teachers and students reported that performance-focused goals were more common and task-focused goals less common in middle school than in elementary teachers who created a mastery goal structure for their classroom had students who were more intrinsically motivated and had a higher academic self-concept performance-oriented goal structure classroom students were less intrinsically motivated and had lower academic self-concept

Achievement Processes
Goal Setting, Planning and Self-monitoring! Planning and Self-Monitoring

important to encourage them to plan how they willr each their goals

Achievement Processes
Expectations! Students Expectations

beliefs about how well they will do on upcoming tasks (1) how good they are at particular activity (2) how good they are in comparison to other individuals (2) how good they are in relation to their performance in other activities how hard students work also depends on the value they place on the goal cultures achievement orientation also plays a role in inuencing students expectations

Achievement Processes
Expectations! Teachers Expectations

teacher with high expectations tend to spend more time providing a framework for students learning, ask higher-level questions, more effective in managing students behaviour than teachers with average and low expectations teachers often have more positive expectations for high ability students and will inuence their behaviour

Achievement Processes
Values and Purpose!

Values are beliefs and attitudes about the way we think things should be they involve what is important to individuals Purpose is the intention to accomplish something meaningful to oneself and contribute something to the world beyond the self often we communicate the importance of goals such as studying hard and getting good grades but rarely what these goals may lead to (purpose for studying hard etc.)

thus students will only get short term goals

Motivation Relationships, and Sociocultural Contexts

Social Motives!

Social motives: needs and desires that are learned through experiences with the social world. Childrens social concerns inuence their lives at school. Those who display socially competent behaviour are more likely to excel academically than those who do not

Motivation Relationships, and Sociocultural Contexts

Child-Rearing Practices!

Parents show know the child enough to provide the right amount of challenge and support Should provide a positive emotional climate to motivate them to internalise their parents values and goals modeling motivated achievement behaviour

Motivation Relationships, and Sociocultural Contexts

Provision of Specic Experiences at Home!

childrens skills and work habits when they enter kindergarten are among the best predictors of academic motivation and performance in both elementary and secondary school students achievement is linked to academic resources at home

Motivation Relationships, and Sociocultural Contexts

Peers!

students who are more accepted by their peers and who have good social skills often do better in school and have positive academic achievement motivation