The Teacher’s Perspective Of Student Motivation

These italicized paragraphs express the core ideas behind much of the advice traditionally offered to teachers about motivating students. The two views are contradictory, even though both are frequently expressed. Neither is valid, but each contains elements of truth.

The first view incorporates overly romantic views of human nature and unrealistic expectations about school learning. We can expect students to find learning activities to be meaningful and worthwhile, but not to experience them as “fun” in the same sense that they experience recreational games and pastimes. Even when they find the content interesting and the activity enjoyable, learning requires sustained concentration and effort.

Th e second view incorporates overly cynical views of human nature and negative expectations about teachers’ potential for inducing motivation to learn. Besides seeking to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, children can learn to experience satisfaction in acquiring knowledge, developing skills, satisfying curiosity—in a word, learning.

Teachers can shape students’ behavior by manipulating reinforcement contingencies, but they also can help students to appreciate their learning opportunities—to fi nd them meaningful and worthwhile for reasons that include intrinsic motivation and self actualization.

If the two extreme views are not valid, what might be a more balanced and fruitful way to think about student motivation? I will develop my answer throughout my blog, based on the notion of socializing students’ motivation to learn. Before you read my views, however, take stock of your own. Motivation reflects the reasons behind our choices and actions. Our beliefs about these reasons anchor our understandings about
our own motivation, which we tend to project to other people when we try to understand their motivation. So, to sharpen your awareness of your own current motivational thinking, take time to refl ect on the following questions and write down your answers ;

1. What activities do you engage in frequently because you enjoy them? Why? (What makes these activities so enjoyable? What do you get out of them?)
2. What activities do you engage in frequently even though you don’t enjoy them (because they are responsibilities that you can’t evade or necessary steps toward some important goal)? How do you motivate yourself to perform these unenjoyed activities well (or at least, well enough)?
3. Most people prefer certain kinds of books, movies, television programs, and hobbies over others. For example, they may prefer realistic fi ction over fantasy, comedy over drama, golf over tennis, or collecting historical memorabilia over collecting stamps. What might account for these contrasting preferences? Why do you prefer certain types of books, movies, sports, or hobbies over others, especially others that appear similar but don’t quite “do it” for you?
4. As a student, which subjects or learning activities have you found most enjoyable or rewarding? Which are boring or merely “OK” rather than stimulating or worthwhile? Are some anxiety-provoking, irritating, or in some other way aversive for you, so that you try to avoid them? What explains your contrasting motivational responses?
5. What self-motivational and coping strategies do you call on to help you do what you need to do when you find a school activity boring or aversive? When you find the activity frustrating or overly difficult?
6. In what ways have your teachers and professors affected your motivation positively or negatively (not just your liking for their subject matter and learning activities, but also your motivation to learn with understanding and to do your best work on assignments)?
7. Have your answers to these questions evolved as you progressed from childhood through adolescence into adulthood? If so, how and why?
8. Do you think that people who differ from you in gender, race, or cultural background would generate similar or different answers to these questions? Why?
9. What do your answers suggest about strategies to emphasize or avoid in your attempts to motivate students to learn (given the ages of your students)?

Save your responses to these questions. As you read through the book, revisit them to compare your own experience-based ideas about motivation with ideas from the scholarly literature. If you note any contradictions, try to identify the reasons for them and any implications for your practice as a teacher.

The remainder of this chapter provides a general introduction to motivation and to my perspective on it. First, it offers definitions of some basic concepts and a summary of ways in which theorizing about motivation has evolved, culminating in notions of intrinsic motivation or fl ow as the ideal state. Next, it argues that it is unrealistic to expect to routinely produce intrinsic motivation in the classroom and proposes producing motivation to learn as a more feasible alternative. A preview of what is involved in stimulating and socializing students’ motivation to learn follows.
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