Motivation
CJ Starnes
Kalisha Fagan
Brittany Vance
Lacey Head
Julia Nicholson
Sammantha Kennedy
What is Social Motivation?

The social cognitive view of motivation
consists of two factors:
1.
Various models that people are
exposed to.
2.
The level of self-efficacy that a person
has.
Factor One: Persuasive Models
Persuasive models include:
 Monkey see, monkey do observation.
“By observing models, students acquire
knowledge and strategies that they
subsequently apply as they work on tasks.
Modeled displays also convey to observers
that they can succeed if they follow the
same sequence of actions” (Juvonen and
Wentzel, 163).
Factor One Continued…
Vicarious reinforcement: a student expects the
same award after seeing someone else receive
reinforcement for completing a certain behavior.
 If a student sees a behavior being modeled by
one of their peers and he or she receives an
award for that behavior, the student expects the
same award for performing the same behavior.
 Example: If a child sees their older sibling get in
trouble for talking back to their parents, the child
will observe that if he talked back to his parents
like his older sibling did, he would get into trouble
and receive the same punishment.

Factor Two: Self Efficacy
When a person sees a model and succeeds
consistently when following the model, it
increases his or her self efficacy.
 Self-efficacy can be defined as how capable
one feels at performing a certain task.

There are three types of learning goals…



Task Mastery Goals: This is most common with students
with high self-efficacy. Doing whatever it takes to master
the concept or material being taught.
Performance-Approach Goals: For this type of student,
the understanding of the concept and mastery of the
material is not important, it is the ability to outperform
everyone else in the class. This is most common with
students who have a high sense of self-efficacy as well
but might not necessarily understand the ideas.
Performance- Avoidance Goals: These students avoid
the spotlight in order to avoid failure and not be
considered any less intelligent than other students. They
also take part in self-handicapping behavior such as
procrastination so they can blame their failure on
everything else other than their own ability. These type of
students have low self-efficacy.
Outcome Expectations
Self-efficacy can also influence motivation
by the outcome expectations of students.
 For a positive outcome: students will put
more time and effort into understanding the
concept and the ideas surrounding it.
 For a negative outcome: students will not
make as much effort and use simpler
learning skills.
 The more effort put forth in preparing for a
task, the higher self-efficacy that the
student will have.

Attributions
This is a third way in which self-efficacy
influences motivation. Attributions refer to
the reasons why students fail or succeed at
a task.
 Students with high self-efficacy attribute the
failure to not putting enough effort toward a
task. They take the blame themselves.
 Students with low self-efficacy attribute
their failure to the lack of ability to do well.
They will also say that success is because
of luck or an easy task.

Observation of the Classroom




Subject: Math
Grade Level: Third Grade
Number of Students: 15 students
Student Demographics:




8 girls and 7 boys.
12 white, two Hispanic, one African American.
Most are low SES, a few high SES.
At least half of the class attends church or has some
belief system enforced at home.
 There is one special education student, 2 diagnosed
ADHD students, one student has to attend speech
classes twice a week.

Length of Observation: 45 Minutes.
Instructor and Student:

Instructor: The instructor has been teaching for 26 years
and taught third grade for 16 years. Instructor rewards
students when goals are accomplished and motivates
children to learn with stations.

Instruction: Teacher gives clear instruction and
directions to students concerning expectations of rules
and work ethic. She is consistent in abiding by the
classroom rules/procedures.

Students: Students observed are mostly well behaved
as long as they have clear instructions. Students have a
very wide range of intellectual ability.
Interactions in the Classroom

Teacher-Student Interaction: Teacher gives directions to
whole group. If teacher sees a large group struggling with
a certain concept, she will go over it again. Teacher
gladly answers questions of students.

Student-student interaction: Students are paired
according to their performance on the Star Math test. For
example, a high lower level student will be paired with a
higher high level student.
Classroom Management

They are to ask their peers a question first and
after asking peers, then may ask the teacher. The
teacher uses lights off, lights on to get their
attention. If they do not choose to follow directions,
the student goes back to his or her desk and
completes work alone instead of being able to
work with others.
Assessment and Curriculum

Assessment: Students turn in work completed to
their own personal mailbox. Teacher has skill
sheets that she checks off when she sees
students accomplishing certain skills.

Curriculum: The classroom uses Harcourt Math
and uses Star Math to test the students’
mathematic skills.
Other Observations in the
Classroom



The teacher says “Everyone get your books out” and she
notices that a boy is getting his books out like she asks
and she praises him for it. Then all of the other students
quickly get their books out as well (modeling).
The teacher has assigned them math problems to show
understanding of concepts they have gone over that day.
Some students ask if they may do more problems
because they feel very confident that they can do that skill
(task mastery).
The teacher gives out math problems and a student
speeds through the problems so that he can finish the
problems before everyone else, although each problem
might not be correct. (performance approach).
Similarities in Theory and
Observation
We saw an example of outcome expectations in the
classroom. A boy was very bright in the subject of
math, has a high self-efficacy, and expects to do well.
But a girl in the class struggles with math and if she
receives a good grade she credits the success to
luck.
 Students either feel as if they have knowledge and
are very good at a subject, or they think that they just
got lucky because they received a good grade.
 A student can have confidence in math, but can have
low self-efficacy while doing fractions.

What Is Our Argument?

After observing the classroom for 45
minutes and reading up on social
motivation, we have come to the
conclusion that even though both factors
that influence motivation are valid, we feel
that the students in the classroom we
observed and honestly most elementary
students for that matter, are motivated
more by seeing other students model a
behavior and get certain consequences,
whether they be good or bad.
Our Supporting Evidence


When we observed the classroom, we noticed students were
more motivated when the teacher gave praise to another child
for doing their work or being on task instead of being motivated
by how they feel they could do on a task. We feel that at a
younger age some children knew that they were not that good at
certain topics, but mostly it felt to us, were not that self-aware. It
is not that we do not believe that children are not motivated by
how they feel they will do on a subject, we just observed that
students would stay on task or do their work when another child
was praised for doing such a great job.
One example of this is when the children were doing math
problems and one of the students got off task and made the
others get off task to look at him, the teacher praised another
student for doing such a great job with doing their work quietly.
When the students who were not doing their work realized that
in order to get praise like that student did they would have to do
their work, they immediately stopped and got back on task
again.
How It Pertains to Psychology and
Instruction

It shows that we, as teachers, need to center
our classroom on model-based behaviors. At
this age many things are done in groups and
when a child is praised in the classroom, the
other students will strive to get some sort of
praise also. Of course we need to make sure
our students have high self-efficacy and it is
something we teachers need to continue to
work on for our students, but at this time in a
child’s life, they just want to be acknowledged
for doing something good, so when they see
an opportunity to get this praise they will do
what needs to be done to receive it.
References:
Snowman, Jack, Rick McCown, and
Robert Biehler. Psychology Applied to
Teaching . 13th . Canada: Wadsworth,
2009. 370-372. Print.
 Juvonen, Jaana, and Kathryn Wentzel.
Social Motivation. Cambridge, New
York: Press Syndicate of the University
of Cambridge, 1996. 163. Print.

Quiz
Fill in the blank
1.Vicarious reinforcement: to receive the same reinforcement, that we see
____________get for exhibiting a particular behavior.




a. The teacher
b. Ourselves
c. someone else
d. our parents
2. Consider this: If a child sees their older sibling get in trouble for talking back to their
parents, the child will observe that if he talked back to his parents like his older sibling did,
he would ___________________.




a. Get away with it
b. get into trouble and receive the same punishment
c. get into trouble, but not get punished
d. None of the above
3. Choose one: The __________effort put forth in preparing for a task, the higher selfefficacy that the student will have.



a. More
b. Lees
c. All of the above
4-6. Self-efficacy can affect motivation to learn
Match each learning goal with the correct definition:
1. Task Mastery Goals:
2. Performance-approach goals:
3. Performance-avoidance goals:



a. Reducing the possibility of failure so as not to appear less capable
then other students. They engage in self-handicapping behaviors
(procrastinating) so they can blame the failure on the circumstances
instead of one’s ability.
b. Doing what is necessary to learn meaningfully the information and
skills that have been assigned. Most common with students who have
high self-efficacy.
c. Demonstrating to teachers and peers one’s superior intellectual
ability by outperforming most others in the class. Popular with students
who have high self-efficacy but they often don’t understand the ideas or
how they relate in the concept. Ex: Cram for the highest grade.
7. Someone with low self-efficacy will attribute their failure to just not having
the ability but will say their success was_______________________.
 a. to an easy task or luck.
 b. because they were prepared
 c. because they did their best
 d. None of the above
True or False
8. Students with high self-efficacy attribute the failure to not
putting enough effort toward a task.
_______
9. When a person sees a model and succeeds consistently
when following the model, it increases his or her self-efficacy.
_______
10. The social cognitive view of motivation consists of how
many factors?
1
 2
 3
 4

The End!