Motivation!!

Ok, so after all the research that we have found we thought it would be interesting to put it all together in a short and sweet post.

To start, we found that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can work together or separately; we need to know this as teachers because it helps us plan what tools we should provide certain tools we should provide for our students. Intrinsic motivation comes from the inside: students do something that they like and enjoy, their personal motivation. Extrinsic motivation is something that comes from the outside, like parents or teachers who encourage you to do your work or get good grades. This can be combined with intrinsic if students start to enjoy doing their work while aiming to get good grades.

Rewards!!

Such a behaviorist approach to learning. Students don’t always need a reward. We can give them a reward only when the material or task is hard and complicated for them to do and they are lacking motivation. However, we found that rewards are not always the best solution, if a student enjoys doing the work don’t give him/her a reward, since they won’t do it for the pure enjoyment anymore. They will expect a reward each time.

Use different strategies to help the students attain goals and acquire motivation. One of the strategies we found was to use the smart goal setting chart. This will help the students set small and attainable goals. When they reach their goals, they will feel proud and want to achieve more. This will make them motivated.

We also found several posters and pictures that can be put up in a classroom to remind the students that they are not alone and that you are there for them. Also some posters are jokes, so at an older age level the students can read and understand, or further interpret, that motivation is important in life. They need to have goals in order to achieve things in life. You will see some examples in our blog of some posters and pictures.

We also want our students to feel safe as they attempt things they might not be familiar with. As long as they try, they are succeeding. It is important that the students know that trying something is the first step of learning. Without trying they will not be able to succeed! They need to know this.

We found a good example of a Disney figure who represents intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It’s Mulan, but I won’t spoil the post, you will need to read it. It’s very interesting and fun!

Overall we enjoyed researching intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and now we better understand why some students like math better than reading or vice-versa. We hope you enjoy our blog on motivation.

–Ceileigh —

Motivational Posters: A Cynical Rant

comic from http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-06-05/

One thing I wanted to bring up about the posters is that we need to be careful what message they’re sending, and how they’re used. As this comic demonstrates the message or intent of a poster might not always be clear to students. Furthermore, the boss in this strip seems to feel that since he’s hung up some motivational posters, he doesn’t need to do much more in order to motivate his workers. In my opinion, posters can never substitute genuine praise and feedback that is tailored to each individual. I think posters are useful when they outline specific strategies and remind students of good working habits (like Ceileigh’s SMART poster concerning Goals), but often times I feel motivational posters are nothing more than feel-good mush that never gets applied to student’s lives. I’ve seen so many friends post these inspiring quotes about how they’re going to eat better, work out, and travel the world, but they never seem to actually do it, or they go to the gym for like a week and then give up.

I can definitely remember rolling my eyes at some of the motivational posters in high school as they all seemed so cliche and generic, and not inspiring at all. I felt like some teacher’s used them to give the feel of an encouraging environment, without actually putting any work into making an encouraging environment (i.e giving feedback, praise, encouragement, autonomy and choice in assginments, etc). The poster I remember the most is one with Einstein and this quote, anyways I didn’t find it motivating as a teenager, I just rolled my eyes (again, I was a teenager after all) and thought “yeah right Einstein,  like you’re any worse at math than I am.” So in this case this motivational poster was actually demotivating for me.

image from: http://www.quotehd.com/imagequotes/TopAuthors/albert-einstein-physicist-quote-do-not-worry-about-your-difficulties-in-mathematics.jpg

My opinion on motivational is that if all that’s been stopping you from accomplishing something is not seeing some made-in-china, mass-printed, glossy image of a mountain peak paired with an overused phrase, than I think you need to ask yourself some serious questions about your intrinsic motivation. So to summarize, I think teacher’s need to up their game and provide deeper, more meaningful and more personal ways to motivate their students.

-Katelyn

http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mXA8CF2iHj9VXbC53foLXhQ.jpg

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/71/7117/BQQV100Z/posters/you-miss-100-of-the-shots-you-don-t-take-black.jpg

http://rlv.zcache.com/classroom_inspirational_poster-r1ce726ea87a5475799a20cc034dcf071_w89_8byvr_512.jpg?bg=0xffffff

https://instrinsicandextrinsicmotivation.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cm7800english_skills_teaching_classroom_display_poster.jpg

-Sarah

Motivation on the Wall

Ceileigh’s last post got me interested in what kinds of neat posters there are to help motivate our students in the classroom. Like I commented, we can’t be with each students 100% of the time, so we need other resources to step in and encourage and guide our students. However, you must keep in mind not to bombard your students with visual text or they might not be able to focus on what’s important. I think it would be a neat idea to have a few consistent posters, but then change one or two each week. It will give the students a little change to look forward to, as you continue to motivate them.

-Sarah-

Being S-M-A-R-T

To help students with goals to increase their intrinsic motivation we could use these charts/graphs to put in our classrooms. It is easy to read and students would be able to use these criteria’s to make their own goals for the small projects we will be doing.

Students need something like this to help them start their intrinsic motivation, this is part of their extrinsic because it comes from the outside, but eventually we would want the children to acquire intrinsic motivation. This means that students will set goals in their minds therefore their motivation will come from them and not from the teacher. They will be able to achieve their own goals by working hard and putting effort into their work. Motivation is also a key concept for achieving the goals they have set.

This chart works for everyone, it is simple and very easy to use. Children in elementary school can use this as well as professional trained athletes or even a business man/woman.

By setting goals, you are going to be more motivated to achieve them and succeed a lot more than someone who did not create goals.

—Ceileigh—

http://topachievement.com/smart.html

Scott Geller’s The Psychology of Self-Motivation

Scott Geller’s talk was an insightful look at how we motivate ourselves, and how others can impact that. His talk is more focused on how it applies to education as he is a professor at Virginia Tech. He says to be self-motivated (or as he puts it empowered) we need 3 things: to feel able to do the task (self-efficacy), to feel that the goal/task can be met and lastly to feel that it is worthwhile. This last point is what Geller calls vision, as long as we feel competent and want to do a task then we’re self-motivated. So how do we make students feel competent? Teachers have to provide them with feedback and recognize their efforts.

Choice is also important in allowing students to feel that they have a say in their education, thus helping them self-motivate. Perhaps Skinner is right and we’re controlled by consequences, but when we work towards a positive consequence that is when we feel motivated, avoiding punishment/failure only serves to diminish our motivation. However, the reality is that many treat education as a way of avoiding failure, rather than a chance for success. As he points out students say I have to go to class and not I get to go to class. Furthermore, when he asked his university students how many of them were there to not fail, the vast majority of them raised their hand. When students think like this, how likely are they to actually engage with the material, rather than just memorize it for the test?

Another point Geller makes that I found interesting was the importance of community in motivation. I found that this was a sort of socio-constructivist approach to motivation. It makes sense though when we think about it, because we often rely on our family and peers for the support we need to get us through challenging times. Furthermore, our society/community often communicates to us what is rewarding or unrewarding.  For example, that we should go for a career as a doctor and not a plumber, because one is regarded as more  rewarding and worthy of recognition. This can effect someone’s choices and motivation for certain career choices. In addition, people can become independently motivated as our society teaches that individual success is what we should strive for. As a result people begin to compare themselves to others in order to find motivation and self worth. This means that people lose intrinsic motivation and become extrinsicly motivated. If you can’t manage something on your than you’re seen as a failure. Geller argues that people would be more motivated if they went from being independent to interdependent.

Vision is a picture or goal that we have within ourselves that gives us the fire to keep going. Scott Geller had a vision of being a great drummer like Gene Krupa which gave him the drive he needed to learn how to drum quickly. His teacher was able to demonstrate the skills for him and would have him follow along to teach him. This was an interdependent way of teaching as both teacher and student worked together. However, when Scott Geller was faced with another teacher who just showed him a drum roll, told him it was easy and to practice, his motivation was destroyed and he wasn’t able to master the skill. It was only when his original music teacher realized that he needed to break the task down, and praise improvement even if Scott wasn’t at the goal yet, that Scott was able to master the drum roll.

I think this story is important, because it demonstrates several things 1) teachers need to help students break down larger goals into manageable steps. 2) Never tell a student who is struggling that something is easy, this will only make them feel that they have failed and will discourage them. 3) As teachers we need to step back and imagine a time when we were struggling to learn something, this will allow us to empathize with students and think of strategies that worked for us, and might also work for them. 4) Telling someone they can do something isn’t enough, teachers need to show them how they can achieve this, and offer them strategies that will help them succeed.

-katelyn

Rewards $$$

Calvin thinks that he would be more motivated to do his school work if he is rewarded with money. Should students be given money as a motivator? I know I personally  I would be more motivated to do my homework if I was paid to do it. Although, giving students money to do their school work would get in the way of passing on the love and desire of learning: kids should be encouraged to go to school and do the work for the sheer desire to learn and acquire new things, not because they will be given money for it. Although, if we consider  how university and CEGEP students can receive scholarships based on their grades, it’ like being paid to do your work. Truthfully this sometimes motivates me t get something done and work harder at it – I know if I don’t keep my grades up I won’t get that money.

If we read this cartoon care carefully, Calvin is still looking at this extrinsic motivator “minimally.” He thought he could make 4$ by getting the D’s, instead of aiming for the A and getting 50$ (even though his dad didn’t agree to it). This would have been a great opportunity for his dad to ask what else he would do his school work for, perhaps using time on the computer, or a favourite dessert as a reward instead. This being said, if you are going to reward students for something, you need to make that reward stimulating. If a student loves going outside for recess, don’t say the reward is them staying inside to play a game. For Calvin, when his school work is done, he could even have 30 mins of exploring with Hobbs outside after supper.  As a teacher, you should know what each of your students considers a reward and what will drive them to complete a task they might need a prompt to complete. If your students are struggling to complete a task, set up smaller steps and goals for them to reach first. Finishing half of a task could be just as challenging for one student as completing the whole assignment would be for another, so if you say they will have a reward at the end, it won’t properly motivate the child who needs encouraging along the way. As we talked about in class, immediate feedback is helpful for students in this situation.

-Sarah J.

Response to Dan Pink’s talk “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”

If you have the time I highly suggest that you watch the video above that animates Dan Pink’s talk entitled “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. While Dan Pink is an economist and is looking at motivation from that perspective, I found much of what he had to say relevant to the classroom. Which makes sense as schools aren’t vacuums that exist in their separate spaces, but are a part of a larger community and society. To summarize Dan’s video it was found that money only worked to boost performance in mindless and simple tasks ( in the classroom this would be memorizing facts, mindless worksheets, etc). In tasks that required cognitive thought and skill the amount of money one rewarded did not only fail to make them more productive, but also made them less productive. This shocked researchers so much that they decided to replicate the experiment again in India, where the monetary rewards would be more valuable (people got rewarded 2 weeks, 1 month or 2 months worth of salary for a task), however once again it was found that the people who received the largest reward performed the least. Instead it seems there are 3 main things that drive human motivation autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed and in charge of our own actions, however most companies (and schools) are built on compliance and not autonomy. Mastery is when we want to improve and become an “expert” on something, and do it regardless of reward. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly to Dave Pink is purpose, the sense that our actions are worthwhile rather than futile.

Dave Pink goes on to further explore the power of having purpose. He brings up the example of people who develop free software such as linux, open office, firefox, etc in their spare time, not because they’re getting paid but because they enjoy creating something with purpose. An interesting example, he brought up was an Australian software company that gives it’s employees 24 hours to work on whatever they want, with whoever they want and the only rule is that they have to show them the results. The structured behaviourist might think that these employees would just party or do nothing, but in reality the employees were more productive in tackling problems and creating new ideas.

This example immediately made me think of the classroom and self-directed learning. How exciting would it be as a student to hear a teacher say that today you could work on whatever you want, with whoever, just show them the results afterwards. As a student I think I would be incredibly excited to have this freedom, and would gather someone who compliments my working style and start working on an experiment and/or research project. I’d probably end up working into recess and lunch. I think this would be exciting for teacher’s as well because they wouldn’t know what students are up to until the end of the day, and would end up with a vast array of different projects. Extrinsic rewards wouldn’t be necessary, because students would naturally be motivated to learn, gone is the need to push students to work for rewards or to avoid  punishment. However, I think this approach to teaching and learning would be difficult to implement unless you had a kindergarten class or were in a free school. Students might be confused and unable to direct themselves in learning, because they’re so used to having teachers and adults do all the thinking for them. Furthermore, parents, colleagues and school administrators might feel that this method would fail to teach students the curriculum. I suppose for now us teachers will have to start small, and gradually try to implement more autonomy, mastery and purpose into our lessons. This can be achieved by letting students work on what they want but with more constraints to meet curriculum. Hopefully this will allow our student’s to find their own drive and understand how to direct their own learning, so that they can lead to work for themselves, rather than be compliant to the demands of others.

-Katelyn

Motivation as a Spectrum

comic from here

Amidst all this debate it’s easy to feel as though motivation is dichotomy between intrinsic and extrinsic. Articles on the subject often seem to essentially label one form of motivation as the answer to all our problems, while the other is the evil that causes the problems. In reality however, no one is always intrinsically or extrinsically motivated in every situation. In fact, we’re often a mix of both types of motivation while striving towards a task. The textbook gives the example of someone of completing work, because it will better enable them to do something they enjoy. The hockey player may not like performing drills, but they may enjoy what the drills give them, and increased sense of competence in the sport. If we motivate ourselves to do something, because it is a step towards a valued goal is this intrinsic or extrinsic motivation? The answer is that it is both, for we have accepted the outside forces that determine our ability to meet our goal. We’ve internalized the external (like in the comic above). Another way that we can see how these two forms of motivation can work together is to stop seeing them as opposites, and instead see them as independent forms of motivation that can mingle together in many ways. Sometimes we have more intrinsic motivation and other times we have more extrinsic motivation, and at other times they might be equal.

comic from here

Bringing it all to the classroom…

As teachers we need to realize the importance of both types of motivation, as the textbook states that we may be able to use intrinsic motivation for some lessons (like Calvin and Hobbes are in their quest to learn more about snakes), but others (such as multiplication, or conjugating french verbs) are much harder to tie into student’s interests. Therefore some sort of external rewards may be needed to motivate students to learn this material. I think as teachers it is important for us to use both forms of motivation to our advantage and to not just focus on promoting one in the classroom. This can be difficult as a task might only require intrinsic motivation for some, but extrinsic motivation for others. This means that we’ll need to get to know our students well in order to better understand their interests, goals, worries, personality, etc. This will allow teachers to tailor what sort of motivation they provide students with. For instance, studies have shown that extrinsic rewards should only be given if a student shows no interest in a task and is reluctant to complete it, giving extrinsic rewards for something a student is already interested in may teach them that this task is supposed to be a chore, and thus their intrinsic motivation for this task diminishes. This phenomena is known as the overjustification effect (more info here). However, this doesn’t mean we can’t offer any extrinsic motivation at all for intrinsically motivated students just that we need to be careful we do it in a productive way. This means giving praise when students have progressed or put a lot of effort into something, rather than offering praise for every simple task they complete. Also having the odd unexpected reward doesn’t seem to diminish intrinsic motivation either. (more info here)

In conclusion, teachers need to stop treating intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as if they’re a dichotomy of evil vs. good, and recognize that each form of motivation has something beneficial to offer to our classrooms.

-Katelyn

Motivation in Athletes

While browsing around for new ideas about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation I came across this article: http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/balance-intrinsic-and-extrinsic-motivation-for-success

This article was focused on how different types of motivation can set up athletes for failure or success. Athletes who are mostly extrinsically motivated for instance, often crack when they find themselves not performing up to their or other’s expectations. In fact only being extrinsically motivated can set one up for failure, as they may later on question why they are doing this? However, some extrinsic motivation is needed as athletes usually need the guidance and will to please their coaches in order to reach their full potential. The article maintains that the best athletes are those who can find a balance between the two that allows them to be persistent, determined and flexible to setbacks.

However, the authors of the article realized that for children it is especially important to help them develop their intrinsic motivation. This can be done by creating an environment centered on motivation. There are two main approaches to achieving this 1: is to motivate by focusing on winning, and comparing the team and players to other, this is motivation based on performance. The second way to motivate is through mastery, this means encouraging kids to set and meet goals and working to feel competent in one’s skill. The second approach is especially beneficial to those who are just learning a skill, because it takes the pressure off of winning, and focuses on progressing instead. While these findings are in the area of sports, I think they’re incredibly relevant to the field of education as well. How often do motivate students by praising them on “winning” (in our case doing very well on a test, or assignment) and also how often are students motivating themselves by comparing themselves to others? I know I’m guilty of the second one, because I often look at class averages to judge how well I did in a class, and thus how proud I should be.

One point I wanted to make about this article was how they distinguished self and intrinsic motivation. I found this quite interesting, because we often think of the two terms as always being interchangeable. However, this article argues that there is a distinction, intrinsic motivation is about enjoying and activity and becoming completely immersed in it. There is actually a specific term for this called “flow” where one loses self-consciousness while performing a task thus they no longer care about who is winning or losing, or how they’re performing because they’re so engrossed. We’ve probably all experienced this at some point in our childhood when we found the time flying by while we did something for hours and hours. Self motivation is different in that it can be pressure within us  to perform well. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand is free of all internal and external pressure.

So, what are some implication for the classroom?

1. Engross your students

We’re more likely to do work if it doesn’t feel like work. So, as teachers we should be moving away from worksheets (which are never fun) and attempt to make our lessons more engaging for students.

2. Track progress and set goals

Progress doesn’t always come as quickly as we would like it. That’s why it is important to track it as a way of reminding ourselves how far we’ve come. Which makes sense, most people who start dieting like to have some way of comparing their before and after results. I remember as a child being motivated to read, because I wanted to progress to the next reading level and start reading more difficult books. If my teacher’s library hadn’t been clearly marked with a level system, I don’t think I would’ve realized how much my reading was improving in the school year.

3. Positive praise

Giving students positive praise is a great way to motivate them. It can be specific to the task at hand, used to boost their mood, or build their self-esteem. The important thing is that it is sincere and unique to the person and moment. Stamping a red Good job! on every single assignment and test, probably isn’t the most constructive praise.

There you have it proof that sports psychology has a relevant place in the classroom.

-Katelyn