Cognitive Factors in Motivation
How do students’ & teachers’ beliefs or expectations about learning
affect achievement?
The Interplay of Cognition and Motivation
• Motivation affects cognitive processing.
• Cognitive processes affect motivation.
• We are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to do something if:
• We have high self-efficacy.
• We have a sense of self-determination, feel in control of
making choices.
How can teachers enhance self-efficacy?
• Make sure students master basic skills.
• Help them make progress on difficult tasks.
• Communicate confidence in students’ abilities- verbally &
nonverbally
• Expose students to successful peers.
How can teachers enhance self-efficacy?
• Provide competence-promoting feedback.
• Promote mastery on challenging tasks.
• Promote self-comparison rather than comparison with others.
• Be sure errors occur within an overall context of success.
Self-determination
• Children will generally work harder, more effectively if they have
some feeling of autonomy, control about the nature of the
assignment.
• How could you give your students some control over their school
environment?
Self-determination
• Present rules and instructions in an informational rather than
controlling manner.
• Provide opportunities for students to make choices.
• Give students some autonomy within their organized extracurricular
activities.
• Evaluate students’ performance in a noncontrolling fashion.
• Minimize reliance on extrinsic reinforcers, but use them when
necessary.
• Help students keep externally imposed constraints in proper
perspective.
Areas where children can make choices
• Rules & procedures in class
• Procedures used to achieve mastery
• Topics for research/writing projects
• Due dates on some assignments
• The order in which tasks are accomplished
• Ways of demonstrating mastery
• Criteria for evaluation of project
Importance of shifting reliance on intrinsic reinforcers
• Reliance on external reinforcers undermines students’ feelings of
pride in their accomplishments.
• External reinforcers subtly communicate that class projects are
“chores” rather than activities that can be enjoyed for their own sake.
• Some external reinforcement may be necessary to encourage students
to do the more mundane parts of the assignments.
Expectancies and Values
• Expectancy is a belief that one will be successful. It is affected by:
• Past experience with similar tasks
• Perceived difficulty of task
• Support available, instruction quality
• Effort necessary to succeed
• Value is the perceived benefit to the student of performing the task. It
is affected by:
• One’s own identity as related to task
• Task seen as means to a desired goal
• Intrinsic pleasure of doing task
Circumstances that decrease a task’s value
• Task requires more effort than it is worth
• Task doesn’t seem relevant to learner
• Task becomes associated with bad feelings: frustration, humiliation
• Unfortunately, most academic subjects decline in value over the
school years, as students see little value in learning them.
Internalizing the Values of Others
• Process of internalized motivation
• External regulation- consequences
• Introjection- to gain approval
• Identification- seeing the behavior as being personally
valuable
• Integration – the behavior has been integrated into an overall
system of values
Conditions that promote internalized motivation
• Children need a warm, responsive, & supportive environment to
develop relatedness to important people.
• They need some degree of autonomy to feel self-determination in
making decisions.
• They need appropriate guidance & structure, feedback, & clear
consequences for inappropriate behaviors- scaffolding.
Fostering expectancies & values in the classroom
• Teachers must:
• model how academic achievements have benefited them.
• Share their enthusiasm about subjects.
• Demonstrate real-world application for subject matter.
• Demonstrate the interesting nature of material.
Interest
• Interest- the enticing nature of topics- is a form of intrinsic
motivation.
• Situational interest- interest is evoked by something in the
environment- things that are new, different, unexpected, or vivid.
• Personal interest- relate to the student’s own activities & knowledge.
This energizes much activity related to the topic.
Promoting interest in Classroom Subjects
• Allow some flexibility in topics students explore, in order to include
personal interest
• Tie some classroom subjects to things students are naturally interested
in:
• Topics related to people & culture, nature, animals, current
events
• Include variety in classroom materials
Promoting interest in Classroom Subjects
Present discrepant information
• Encourage fantasy/ make-believe
• Apply new knowledge to events in personal lives
• Ask students to teach others what they have learned.
Goals
• People set goals for themselves & choose courses of action that may
help them succeed. Core goals drive much of what we do. Goals are
also:
• Short-term, transitory
• Long-term & enduring
• Achieving goals enhances self-efficacy
• Variety of goals in various domains- personal, social, physical,
health, recognition, financial
Goals
• Mastery goal- a learning goal
• Performance goal- desire to appear competent
• Performance-approach goal is designed to receive favorable
judgments.
• Performance-avoidance goal is designed to avoid looking bad.
Effects of Mastery & Performance Goals
• Mastery- students pay attention, process in order to develop LTM,
learn from mistakes, realize learning is a process & develop
perseverance.
• Performance- students avoid many tasks that could help them master
new skills, feel serious anxiety in face of challenge.
Fostering Mastery Goals
• Unfortunately, many teachers & parents methods of “motivating”
students actually promote development of performance goals- stress
on grades, future outcomes, competition with peers, grading on a
curve.
• Better to stress usefulness of information, the process of learning
includes difficulty but is beneficial to learner in the end.
Work-Avoidance Goals
• The purpose of the work-avoidance goal is to put as little effort as
possible into that task:
• Off-task behavior
• Getting help on easy tasks
• Pretending one doesn’t understand
• Choosing the easiest alternatives
• Due to low self-efficacy, lack of interest
Social Goals
• Forming relationships with others
• Becoming part of a group
• Gaining other’s approval
• Achieving status among peers
• Supporting others
• Depending on which peers are chosen, academics can be heightened
or diminished.
Career Goals
• Boys generally set higher goals for themselves than girls, especially in
masculine domains. This is changing.
• Girls raised in traditional cultures often limit themselves to
traditionally feminine occupations, considering impact on family.
• Teachers can open up the possibilities to students with career
education, feedback & encouragement.
Capitalizing on Students’ Goals
• Plan activities that enable students to meet several goals at oncesocial & academic.
• Relate classroom subject matter to students’ present lives & future
goals.
• Students learn more when they have a personal need to know
the material.
• Encourage students to set specific, short-term goals for their learning
& achievement.
Attributions: Perceived Causes of Success & Failure
• Attributions are people's beliefs about what causes what. These
beliefs drive behavior.
• Attributions are used to explain one’s successes and failures.
• They can be irrational, not in concert with actual evidence: impostor
syndrome.
Dimensions of Attributions
• Locus of control
• Internal
• External
• Stability
• Stable
• Unstable
• Controllability
• Controllable
• Uncontrollable
Attributions
• Attributional style can protect one’s self-worth:
• Internal attributions for successes, & external attributions for
failures.
• Or it can defeat a student with real potential:
• External attributions for successes, & internal attributions for
failures.
• Blaming others for one’s failures can become a habit, thoughsociopathic & resistant to feedback
How Attributions Influence Affect, Cognition, & Behavior
• Emotional reactions to success & failure
• Expectations for future success or failure
• Expenditure of effort
• Help-seeking behavior
• Classroom performance
• Future choices
Developmental Trends in Attributions
• It takes some years to distinguish between ability & effort. By age 9
they understand that effort can compensate for ability.
• By 13 they understand that in some areas, a lack of ability can’t be
overcome by effort.
• As they age they tend to attribute more to ability than effort.
Beginning students believe they can learn anything by trying hard.
• In school, if failures are common, self-efficacy declines, along with
effort.
• Intelligence:
• Entity view vs. incremental view
Factors that Influence Attributional Style
• Past successes & failures
• Learned industriousness- a series of tasks that they can
succeed at only with considerable effort.
• Reinforcement & punishment
• Better to reinforce successes & not punish failures
• Messages from adults
• We communicate that we believe students are capable or will
fail. Feedback states what we believe about ability or effort.
• Image management- face saving
• Students tailor excuses to what the teacher will most likely not
react negatively about- illness, family chaos
Mastery Orientation vs. Learned Helplessness
• Mastery orientation is an attributional style that credits one’s ability
& effort- an ‘I can do it’ style.
They set higher goals, seek change, persist in face of failure.
• Learned helplessness is an attributional style of futility about one’s
chances for success- an ‘I can’t do it’ style.
• They set easy goals, avoid challenges, underestimate their
abilities, give up quickly.
• This is not common before age 8. Having many resources
available for dealing with academic challenges helps this.
Teacher Expectations & Attributions
• Teachers form opinions about students’ abilities, strengths, &
weaknesses early in the school year. They underestimate:
• Those who are unattractive
• Who misbehave in class
• Who speak in dialects
• Who are members of minorities
• Who are recent immigrants
• Who come from lower SES backgrounds
Other problems with teacher expectations
• Teachers often hold an entity view of intelligence.
• Once they develop a negative view about a child, they behave
noticeably differently. Body language.
• When they believe children have high ability:
• They create a warmer environment, interact with students more
often, give more opportunities for students to respond, give
more positive feedback, cover more challenging topics.
• When they believe children have little potential:
• They give them few opportunities for speaking in class, ask
easier questions, give less feedback to student responses,
present few challenging assignments.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
• Children live up to or down to the expectations others hold for them:
self-fulfilling prophecy. This has the greatest impact in early
elementary years and early secondary year- transitions.
• But sometimes students achieve in order to show the teacher- prove
their worth.
• Parents may need to step in to clarify the child’s problem and ask
teacher to change behavior.
Forming Positive Expectations & Attributions for Student Performance
• Remember that teachers definitely make a difference.
• Look for strengths in every student.
• Communicate optimistic & controllable attributions.
• Learn more about students’ backgrounds & home environments.
• Assess students’ progress regularly & objectively.
Consider Diversity
• Ethnic differences• affect values, future expectations & attributions
• Gender differences• affect effort depending on whether task is seen as gender
appropriate & long-term goals. Girls tend to underestimate their
abilities in male domains. Girls are more easily discouraged by
failures than boys. Due to gender socialization in explanatory
patterns.
• Socioeconomic differences• Consider the examples you use- are lower SES children familiar
with them? Do they see activities as relevant?
• Students with special-needs
• These students need greater self-determination, so we need to
offer them more choices, develop greater independence skills.