Motivation & Study Guide

How do you expect to perform in Educational Psychology? Do you see value in this class? What about the other classes you're taking this semester? Why or why not?

How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs translate into real life? What will your students need? How can you help them learn? Watch this great video introduction to Maslow's Hierarchy.

In the video below, a Junior High School Teacher demonstrates how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can be applied in schools. The music is hokey, but the message is valuable. 

How can you use aspects of self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) to motivate your future students? Read this excellent (and short) article about how we can effectively implement self-determination theory in the classroom. It will also help you with one of your application questions on the study guide! Here's a good overview of this theory for you visual learners.

Are your learning goals typically mastery- or performance-oriented? (Here's a great review of goal orientations) How does this orientation influence your approach to learning? Read the goals a friend of mine made last New Year's Day. What type of goals do they represent? What might goals like this look like in an academic setting?

To what do you typically attribute your successes and failures? Are your attributions internal or external, stable or unstable, controllable or uncontrollable? Watch this explanation of attribution theory. Then check your understanding of attribution theory in the exercise below

1. For which tasks do you have high self-efficacy? Why? For which tasks do you have low self-efficacy? Why? Is your self-efficacy for teaching high or low? Why? What could you do to improve it, if necessary? (We will revisit this concept later in the semester, so I'd love for you to make your teacher self-efficacy a goal to work on) Here is a summary of how self-efficacy impacts students' performance, and another on the profound effect of teachers' attributions and expectations on students' success.
2. Have you ever experienced learned helplessness? Why? How did you overcome it? How can you help future students overcome learned helplessness? Watch this video explanation of learned helplessness. Thisoverview of learned helplessness is very informative and helps us better understand where it comes from. Additionally, there are some very basic strategies that we can use while working with students with learned helplessness (or if we have it ourselves).

1. How can you arouse students' interest and maintain the "right" level of arousal in your classroom?
2. Is there such a thing as "good anxiety?" If so, how can you induce it in the classroom? How do you avoid "bad anxiety?" Do you have any anxiety issues? What steps do/can you take to reduce your own anxiety?
3. Read this article. Will your students experience anxiety? How can you help them?

Study Guide

Motivation Study Guide

 

Objectives (These are to help guide your study. You do not have to respond to them):

●     Recognize the signs of learned helplessness and brainstorm ways to overcome it.

●     Understand the differences between mastery goals and performance goals and how and why you should promote mastery goals in your students.

●     Promote self-regulation in yourself and your students.

●     Differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and understand how and when to use each.

●     Define various psychological needs that affect learning

●     Discover ways to spark curiosity and build interest in learning

●     Explore the effects of anxiety and self-handicapping

 

Key Terms:

Motivation Basics, pages 459-464

Motivation – the reason or reasons someone has for acting or behaving a certain way.

Extrinsic Motivation – motivation that occurs because of an award or punishment. For instance studying for an exam because I want to get a B on the exam.

Intrinsic Motivation – motivation that occurs as I work on activities and challenges that I have a personal interest in. No rewards are incentive or necessary because we consider the activity satisfying and rewarding.

Needs, Goals, and Beliefs, pages 466-481

Mastery Goal – My intentions to improve and learn no matter how awkward I may appear.

Performance Goal – The need to demonstrate abilities to others and perform well in the eyes of others.

Attribution theory – how my explanations, justifications, and excuses impact motivation

Locus – internal or external local of the cause to myself

Stability – Is the cause of the event the same across time and in different situations?

Controllability – is the cause controllable?

Learned Helplessness – when you believe that events and outcomes in your life is mostly uncontrollable and will lead to failure.

Learned Optimism – positive psychology that means you can develop the skills of being happy or positive.

Entity view of ability – a characteristic that is stable or uncontrollable. It cannot change.

Incremental view of ability-a characteristic that is unstable and controllable. By working hard, studying, and practicing knowledge can increase and ability improves.

Self-efficacy – an individual’s belief about one’s competence.

Self-worth – the quality of being worthy of respect or esteem.

Self-determination Theory – A theory that states that we need to feel competent and capable, to have choices, and a sense of control over our lives.

            Need for Autonomy – the desire to have our own wishes over external rewards.

            Need for Competence – the desire to feel effective in interacting and succeeding.

            Need for Relatedness – the desire to establish emotional bonds with others.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – seven levels of human needs

·         Deficiency needs – the lowest level of needs and must be satisfied first

o   Survival, safety, belonging, self-esteem

·         Being needs – higher level needs and referred to as growth needs

o   Intellectual achievement, aesthetic appreciation, self-actualization.

Interest, Curiosity, and Emotions, pages 482-490

Arousal – physical and psychological reactions that can cause a person to feel alert, attentive, wide awake, excited, or tense.

Anxiety – feeling uneasy or self-doubt, or tension

Summary (Write one paragraph to help you remember the key points of this section):

Motivation and goals can help us become successful in whatever we decide to do. In order for us to become successful and have effective goals and motivations we need to know how we work physically, emotional, socially, intellectually, etc. If we know each of these levels we will know what we need to do to satisfy these levels and how to motivate ourselves to reach our goals.

Application Questions:

1.      How will you utilize students' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness to motivate your future students? Include each of the above in your response.

·         One thing that I want to implement in my classroom that supports autonomy is to encourage more choices. Since my content area is Business Marketing there will be a lot of projects that will allow students to choose various ways to complete a project while learning the objectives. To increase their competence I am going to ensure students are evaluated based off of their own improvements. I want to make sure that the praise I am giving them gives confidence in them and that the students desire to learn more and not just to get a good grade. For relatedness, I want to be able to show students their abilities and give them belief that they can do anything and be anything they want to be.

2.      How will you help students in your future classes (or even yourself) to overcome learned helplessness? How can you help your students develop learned optimism?

·         I want to make sure that my students understand things that are in their control and things that are not and how to deal with it. In addition, I will monitor for negative self-talk and try to point it out to teach students to think differently about themselves. Lastly, I will monitor how I talk toward them and about them. I want my students to know that there may be other ways to go about solving a problem and that their way may work. I do not want to take their power away by saying things like “Let me do it for you” or “That is too hard for you.

·         One way to help my students develop learned optimism is to point out the “silver lining” in situations. I can also have students spend 10 minutes of class writing in a reflection journal but their entries have to be about positive experiences or learning moments they had during a class period.

3.      Provide an example of an internal, stable, controllable attribution. Provide an example of an external, unstable, uncontrollable attribution.

·         An example of an internal, stable, controllable attribution is a student that never studies.

·         An example of an external, unstable, uncontrollable attribution is bad luck. With bad luck, it is out of their control and it is external. The event is unstable and there is nothing the student can  really do about it.