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Problem 1 – Motivation & Memory
Motivation
Woolfolk
Motivation: direction, effort, persistency
Motivation in terms of
Trait → certain ppl interested in certain things, e.g. arts
State → temporary situation (e.g. test coming up) e.g. hockey because there is a championship
Combination of both (trait + state = motivated to learn but much more before a test)
Amotivation = complete lack of any intent to act.
Intrinsic motivation = natural human tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we pursue
personal interests and exercise capabilities. Action itself is a reward already (external thigs just a
bonus)
Associated with:
- Better performance
- Long-term
- More deep thinking and less rote memorization
Extrinsic motivation = do something because of what it will gain us e.g. earn grade, avoid
punishment, get paid etc. Action not rewarding, only motivated by outcome
• associated with:
o neg emotions,
o poor academic achievement
o and maladaptive learning strategies
• Benefits:
o provides incentives,
o gives extra push to get started,
o helps persist complete mundane tasks
Locus of causality → reason for acting/ location of the
cause
4 types of extrinsic motivation (from most to least
extrinsic): CONTINUUM
• External regulation → completely controlled by
outside consequences
• Introjected regulation → engaging in task to avoid
guilt or neg self-perceptions
• Identification → participating despite lack of
interest bc it serves larger goal that is personally
motivating
• Integrated regulation → participating bc is both
interesting and has extrinsic reward value
Intrinsic/extrinsic motivation are 2 INDEPENDENT possibilities at any given time we can be motivated
by both (or not)
Themes/approaches to motivation:
,Needs and self-determination
o Early research
o Trait-like
o Achievement, power and affiliation
o Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
First 4 = deficiency needs→ when satisfied motivation for fulfilling them decreases
3 higher level needs = being needs → motivation does not cease when ‘fulfilled’ bc can never be
completely filled
Criticism:
Ppl don’t always act accordingly: have multiple needs at same time or switch between needs in no
particular order
Too simplistic
e.g. child who’s parents are getting divorced, might have higher needs fulfilled but lower needs
unfulfilled. Or I can be hungry and work on higher level needs
Self-determination theory
• Need to feel competent and capable to have sense of autonomy and control over lives and
be connected to others in relationships
• Need for competence – mastery, self-efficacy, better learning goals (achievement)
• Need for autonomy – freedom in own actions (power and control)
▪ Important when work is boring
▪ When environment is interesting, autonomy less important
• Need for relatedness – sense of connection
• These needs seem to be universal (study in korea → also significant here)
Self-determination in classroom
• Classroom goal structure
• Level of autonomy
• Support offered by parents (less so for older students)
• Env that support student self-determination and autonomy associated with greater
student interest, curiosity, sense of competence, creativity, conceptual learning,
grades, attendance, satisfaction, engagement, use of self-regulated learning strategies,
psych well-being and preference for challenge.
Cognitive evaluation theory → students’ experiences can influence intrinsic motivation by
affecting sense of self-determination and competence.
• Acc to this theory all events have 2 aspects:
o controlling – is the situation controlled by external sources (decreases intrinsic
motivation)
▪ stating facts: do this do that
o informational – info about your own competence (increases intrinsic motivation)
▪ explaining, giving information to students: doing this might help you here
and there blah blah
Need for relatedness
• Students who feel sense of connection and relatedness to teachers, parents and peers more
emotionally engaged and intrinsically motivated
,Needs: Lessons for teachers
• Students need choices
• Students need appropriately challenging tasks
• Benefit from watching competence grow → self-monitoring systems or portfolios
• Need to feel ppl in school care abt them and can be trusted to help them
• 4 main reasons why goal setting improves performance
• Direct attention to task at hand and away from distractions
• Energize effort
• Increase persistence
• Promote dev of new knowledge and strategies
Types of goals and goal orientations
• Specific, elaborated, moderately difficult and proximal (likely to be reached in near future)
enhance mot. and persistence
• 4 goal orientations (reasons we pursue goals and standard we use to evaluate progress) in
school:
• Mastery (learning)
• Seek challenge
• Persist even when encounter difficulties on the way
• Goal is to achieve the goal not interested in looking good
• Compare yourself less to others and more to yourself
• An active goal
• Performance (looking good)
• Care abt demonstrating things to others to look good
• Cheating etc.
• Earlier research said performance goals were dysfunctional
• Newer research shows can also be effective
• Avoid looking dumb
• An active goal, higher self-efficacy?
• Work avoidance
▪ Want to finnish fast or escape work altogether
▪ Feel successful when don’t have to try hard, work is easy or
they can goof off
• Social
▪ Fit in w/ peers
▪ Stand out from crowd
▪ Associated with emotional well-being and self-esteem
▪ Can either help or disrupt w/ academic achievement
▪ Making your family proud
Goals in social context
• Way students perceive class defines
classroom goal structure → goals
students think are emphasized in class
• Feedback goal framing and goal
acceptance
• 3 factors make goal setting in
classroom effective:
o Feedback – teacher
emphasizes the goals of the
students, positive feedback motivates and enhances self-competence
, o Goal framing (intrinsic or extrinsic) – activities are related to students’ intrinsic goals,
students process info more deeply
o Goal acceptance – commitment to the goal
Expectancy-value-cost explanations
• Expectancy → if I try hard can I succeed
• (task) Value→ if I succeed will the outcome be valuable or rewarding to me
• Importance/ attainment → significance of doing well on the task closely
related to needs
• Interest/ intrinsic → enjoyment you get
• Utility→ help us achieve short term or long term goal
• Pleasing others
• cost→ neg consequences
• Costs
• Added later to expectancy x value
• How much effort, risks etc.
Motivation = expectancy x (value - cost), (if either is 0 → no motivation)
Attributions and beliefs about knowledge, ability, and self-worth
• How justification or excuse affect motivation (how you think about your own
behavior)
• Try to understand successes and failures → make attributions
• Most of attributed causes for successes and failures can be characterized in terms of
3 dimensions:
• Locus → location of cause, internal or external
• Stability → whether case is same across time and in diff situations
• Controllability → control over cause
• Luck – unstable, external, uncontrollable
• Ability – internal, stable, controllability depends e.g. born with it = uncontrollable
• Attributions in classroom
• Students more motivated when strong sense of self-efficacy → internal
controllable attributions → focus on how to do better next time
• Unmotivated when attribute failures to stable, uncontrollable causes
• Teacher attributions trigger student attributions
Epistemological beliefs → what students believe about knowledge and learning
• Dimensions:
o Structure of knowledge (set or complex structure of concepts)
o Stability/ certainty of knowledge (fixed or develops over time)
o Ability to learn
▪ Particularly important dimension
▪ Fixed mindset / Growth mindset
o Speed of Learning (quickly or slower over time)
o Nature of learning (memorizing or understanding)
Fixed mindset: → assumes abilities are stable, uncontrollable set traits
❖ Tend to set performance-avoidance goals
❖ More likely to cheat and seek sit where they can look smart to protect self esteem
Growth mindset: → abilities unstable, controllable and improvable
❖ Usually hold by children up to 12, after that some ppl dev fixed mindset but not everyone
❖ Associated with greater motivation and learning
Teacher’s mindsets also influence students
How can teachers support growth mindset in students:
, • Teach abt brain and how it works, forming new connections etc
• Present themselves as learning coach and resource, not judge of abilities
• Give feedback focused on learning process and strategies
• Give constructive criticism focused on improvement
Interests, curiosity, emotions, and anxiety
• Decline of interest as children move through school years
• Interests
o Individual interest → more long-lasting aspects of person (trait)
o Situational interest → more short-lived aspects of activity, text or materials that
catch and keep attention (state)
• Interests increase when students feel competent
• 4 phase model of interest development (renninger and hidi):
Sit interest triggered → sit interest maintained → emerging individual interest→ well-developed
individual interest
• Can be good to make materials fun but be careful not to add too many irrelevant
details/info
Curiosity: novelty and complexity
• Acc to Jirout and Klahr curiosity arises when attention is focused on a gap in
knowledge
• Implications for teaching:
▪ Students need base of knowledge before they can experience gaps
▪ Students must be aware of gaps (metacognitive awareness)
▪ The more we learn a topic the more curious we may become abt that subject
Motivation to learn in school: on target
• Motivation to learn → valuing academic activities and trying persistently to get benefit from
them
o Involves quality of mental efforts
• 3 major goals as teachers:
o Immediate goal → catch interets and create state of motivation to learn
o Longer term goal → dev enduring individual interests and trait of being mot to learn
o Students to be cognitively engaged
• Target model→ identifying 6 areas where teachers make decisions that can influence
student motivation to learn:
o Tasks students are asked to do
▪ Interest, utility and power of knowledge
▪ Authentic tasks → relates to student’s life and requires them to use tools of
discipline they are studying to solve problem
▪ Problem-based learning
• Autonomy or authority students are allowed in working
• Support choices (but unstructured or unguided choices can be
counterproductive for learning)
• Bounded choice
• Recognition for accomplishments
• Personal feedback based on own previous work
• Grouping practices
• Goal structure of task→ interpersonal factor
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