MOTIVATION TO LEARN IN SCHOOL
 Teachers are concerned about developing a particular kind of
motivation in their students – the motivation to learn.
 Many elements make up the motivation to learn.
 Planning, concentration on the goal, metacognitive awareness of what
you intend to learn and how you intend to learn it, the active search for
new information, clear perception of feedback, pride and satisfaction in
achievement, and no anxiety or fear of failure.
 Thus motivation to learn involves more than wanting or intending to
learn. It includes the quality of the student’s mental efforts
Three Major Goals for Teachers
 First get students
productively involved
with the work of the class;
to create a state of motivation
 Finally, we want our students to
be cognitively engaged – to
think deeply about what they
study; we want them to be
thoughtful.
to learn.
 Second and long term goal is to
develop in our students the trait
of being motivated to learn so
they will be able “to educate
themselves throughout their
lifetime”
 We will examine the role of
goals, needs, and beliefs in
supporting motivation to learn.
GOALS & MOTIVATION
 A GOAL IS WHAT AN INDIVIDUAL IS STRIVING TO
ACCOMPLISH.
 Goal-directed behaviour: aware of some current condition, some ideal
condition, and the discrepancy between the current and ideal situations.
 Goals motivate people to act in order to reduce discrepancy between
“where they are’ and “where they want to be”
 Goal setting is usually effective for most people.
Why Goals Setting Improves performance
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Goals direct our attention to the task at hand.
Goals mobilize effort.
Goals increase persistence.
Goals promote the development of new strategies when old strategies
fall short
TYPES OF GOALS
 THE TYPES OF GOAL WE
SET INFLUENCE THE
AMOUNT OF MOTIVATION
WE HAVE TO REACH
THEM.
 Goals that are specific,
moderately difficult, and likely
to be reached in the near future
tend to enhance motivation and
persistence.
 Specific goals provide clear
standards for judging
performance. If performance
falls short, we keep going.
 Moderate difficulty provides a
challenge, but not an
unreasonable one.
 Goals that can be reached fairly
soon are not likely to pushed
aside by more immediate
concerns.
TWO CATEGORIES OF GOALS IN CLASSROOM
Learning and performance
 A learning goal is to improve, to learn, no matter how many mistakes
you make or how awkward you appear.
 Students who et leaning goals tend to seek challenges and persist when
encounter difficulties.
 Task-involved learners because they are concerned with mastering the
task and are not worried about how their performance “measures up”
compared to others in the class.
 Task-involved learners are more likely to seek appropriate help
 A Performance Goal. Students with performance goals are focused on
how they are judged by others. They want to look smart and avoid
seeming incompetent. If it seems impossible, they may adopt
defensive, failure-avoiding strategies – they pretend not to care or they
may simply give up. Ego-involved learner because they are
preoccupied with themselves.List of behaviours as indicative of egoinvolved learners
Goals
 Setting learning goals and being task-involved tend to
increase motivation to learn, while working toward
performance goals and being ego-involved diminish
motivation to learn
FEEDBACK AND GOAL ACCEPTANCE
 Besides having specific,
challenges, attainable learning
goals and focusing on the task,
there are two additional factors
that make goal-setting in the
classroom effective.
 The firs is feedback. To be
motivated by a discrepancy
between “where you are” and
“where you want to be,” you
must have an accurate sense of
where you are and how far you
have to go.
 When feedback tells a student
that current efforts have fallen short
of the goal, the student can exert
more effort or even try another
strategy.
 When feedback tells the student
that the goal is reached or
exceeded, the student should feel
satisfied and competent –
competent enough perhaps to set a
higher goal for the future.
 Feedback emphasizing progress
is more effective
GOAL ACCEPTANCE
 When students accept the goals
set by their teachers or establish
their own goals, then the power
of goal setting to motivate
learning can be tapped.
 But if students reject goals set
by others or refuse to set their
own goals, then motivation will
suffer.
 Generally, students are more
willing to adopt the goals of
others if the goals seem
realistic, reasonably difficult,
and meaningful and if good
reasons are given for the value
of the goals.
 Goal acceptance might be
greater (and more appropriate)
if you work with students’
families to identify and monitor
the goals. Guidelines...
GOALS: LESSONS FOR TEACHERS
 Students are more likely to work toward goals that are clear, specific,
reasonable, moderately challenging, and attainable within a relatively
short period of time.
 If teachers focus on students performance, high grades, competition,
and achievement, they may encourage students to set performance
goals. This will undermine the students’ ability to learn and become
task-involved.
 Students may not yet be expert at setting their own goals or keeping
goal in mind, so encouragement and accurate feedback are necessary.
 If you use any reward or incentive systems, be sure the goal you set is
to learn and to improve in some area, not just to perform well or look
smart. And be sure the goal is not difficult.
NEEDS & MOTIVATION
MASLOW’S HIERACHY
 A need as “a biological or
psychological requirement; a
state of deprivation that
motivates a person to take
action toward a goal”
 Humanistic Theory of
motivation - Maslow’s
Hierarchy:
 Human have a hierarchy of
needs ranging from lower-level
needs for survival and safety to
higher-level needs for
intellectual achievement and
finally self-actualization
 Self-actualization is Maslow’s
term for self-fulfillment, the
realization of personal potential.
 Four levels of needs - survival,
safety, belonging, and selfesteem - deficiency needs.
BEING NEEDS
 Being needs - three higherlevel needs - intellectual
achievement, aesthetic
appreciation, and selfactualization. When they are
met, a person’s motivation does
not cease; instead, it increases
to seek further fulfillment
 Unlike the deficiency needs,
these being needs can never be
completely filled. The
motivation to achieve them is
endlessly renewed
 His theory has been criticized
that people do not always
appear to behave as the theory
would predict.
 His theory gives us a way of
looking at the whole person,
whose physical, emotional, and
intellectual needs are all
interrelated.
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
 Students desires to fill lower-level needs may at times conflict wit ha
teacher’s desire to have them achieve higher-level goals.
 BELONG To a social group and maintaining self-esteem within that
group, for example, are important to students.
 If doing what the teacher says conflicts with group rules, students may
choose to ignore the teacher’s wishes or even defy the teacher.
ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION
DAVID McCLELLAND & JOHN ATKINSON.
 People who strive for
excellence in a field for the sake
of achieving, not for some
reward, are considered to have a
high need for achievement.
 Two explanations for the source
of achievement motivation
 1.As a stable and unconscious
traits - something the individual
has more or less of. The origins
are assumed to be in the family
and cultural group of the child.
 2. As a set of conscious beliefs
and values shaped mainly by
recent experiences with success
and failure and by factors in the
immediate situation such as the
difficulty of the task or the
incentives available.
RESULTANT MOTIVATION
 Atkinson noted that all people
have a need to avoid failure as
well as a need to achieve. If our
need to achieve in a particular
situation is greater than the
need to avoid failure, the
overall tendency, or resultant
motivation, will be to take the
risk and try to achieve.
 But if the need to avoid failure
is greater, the risk will be
threatening rather than
challenging, and the resultant
motivation will be to avoid the
situation.
 Motivation to achieve
encourages motivation to learn,
while anxiety and fear of failure
diminish motivation to learn
 A moderate amount of failure
can often enhance their desire
to pursue a problem. Success
gained too easily can decrease
M.
THE NEED FOR SELF-DETERMINATION (SD)
 SD is the need to experience
choice in what we do and how
we do it. It is the desire to
realize our own wishes, rather
than have external rewards or
pressures determine our actions.
 Self-and other-determination,
deCharms used the metaphor of
people as “origins” and
“pawns”
 Origins perceive themselves as
the origin or source of their
intention to act in a certain way.
 As pawns, people see
themselves as powerless
participants in a game
controlled by others
 As origins, students are active
and responsible,
 but as pawns, they are passive
and they take little
responsibility for school work.
Students are too little governed
by their own intrinsic
motivation and too powerless
over external controls and
demands.