Inspiring Students’ Motivation to
Learn
Robin Pappas
Center for Teaching and Learning
Pre-Assessment: Habits of Mind
Introductions and Overview
How did the difference in your motivation impact your learning?
What made the difference in inspiring (or diminishing) your
motivation to learn?
Motivation
There are three things to remember about education. The first is
motivation. The second one is motivation. The third one is motivation.
(Terrel Bell, U.S. Secretary of Education, 1981-85)
One thing that is most certain about the past
as well as the future is the importance of
motivation in the practice of education.
(Maehr and Meyer, 1997)
Motivation as an outcome is important to all
students in the classroom all the time.
(Ames, 1990)
Motivation: Definition
Personal investment an individual has in reaching a desired state
or outcome
•
•
•
•
Focuses on behaviors, not innate or fixed characteristics
Attends to processes and causes
Investment metaphor suggests all persons possess resources
May be seen in action taken and affect expressed
Maehr and Meyer, 1997.
Motivation: 2 Central Concepts and Their Context
Will it work out? Can I really do it?
Goals
Performance Goals versus Learning Goals
Elliot, 1999; Elliot and McGregor, 2001; Valle et al., 2003; Ford, 1992
Expectancies
• Outcome Expectancies: specific actions will bring about a
desired outcome (Carver and Scheier, 1998)
• Efficacy Expectancies: one is capable of identifying, organizing,
initiating, and executing a course of action that will bring about
a desired outcome (Bandura, 1997)
Attributions and Expectancy
Habits of Mind pre-assessment
• Stable (but not fixed)
• Controllable (via own behaviors)
• Temporary, i.e., subject to learner behavior
Ames, 1990; Dweck and Leggett, 1988
Environment
Less supportive
More supportive
Environment is NOT
SUPPORTIVE
Environment is SUPPORTIVE
DON’T SEE
Value
DON’T SEE
Value
SEE Value
LOW
SEE Value
Rejecting
Hopeless
Rejecting
Fragile
HIGH
Student’s efficacy is…
Environment and Motivation
Evading
Defiant
Evading
Motivate
d
Adapted from Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 2010.
To Establish Value
• Connect material to students’ interests
• Provide authentic, real-world tasks
• Show relevance between content and students’ current
academic lives
• Demonstrate relevance of higher-level skills to students’
professional lives
• Identify and reward what you value (syllabus, class
discussion/lecture, feedback, modeling, assessments aligned
to course objectives)
• Show your own passion and enthusiasm for the discipline
To Build Positive Expectancies
• Ensure alignment of learning objectives, assessments, and
instructional strategies
• Identify appropriate level of challenge
• Create assessments that provide an appropriate level of
challenge
• Provide early success opportunities
• Articulate expectations: desired learning for the course and
what students are expected to do to demonstrate that learning
• Provide rubrics
• Describe effective study strategies
To Build Value and Expectancy
• Provide flexibility and control
• Give students opportunities to reflect
• Attend explicitly to course climate
Course Climate
•
•
•
•
16
Intellectual
Social
Emotional
Physical
Course Climate
Marginalizing
Explicit
Implicit
17
De Surra and Church, 1994
Centralizing
Implicit
Explicit
Course Climate—Content
Exclusive Curriculum
Exceptional Outsider
Marginalizing
Explicit
Implicit
Transformed Curriculum
Centralizing
Implicit
18
De Surra and Church, 1994; Marchesani and Adams, 1992
Explicit
Establishing and Maintaining Supportive Course Climate
• Work across cultures and use examples, etc., to relate to
people from diverse backgrounds and statuses
• Establish ground rules for interaction
• Use syllabus and first day of class to set tone for climate
• Set up processes to get feedback on climate
Ambrose et al., 2010; Ames, 1990