Motivation can be very important in determining how well a person performs an activity, or how hard a student studies for a test. Extrinsic motivation involves engaging in an activity because out the outcome, an external reward such as a good grade or a prize. Intrinsic motivation involves engaging in an activity because the activity itself if rewarding. Intrinsic motivation declines in students from elementary school to middle and high school, possibly because the environment changes and grades play a bigger factor for older students. Teachers can reward students in different ways, but it is important for teachers to try to make school-related things intrinsically motivating so that students are not doing work only for the grade.
Locus of control is also very influential on a student's performance. People with an external locus of control believe that the result of their behavior is due to external factors (such as luck or fate), and people with an internal locus believe that the result of their behavior is due to internal factors, like effort or ability.
Teachers should practice praising their students, which is giving them positive feedback. Teachers can give students praise based on the process taken to complete a task (process praise), based on the outcome (performance praise), or based on the attributes or behaviors of a person (person praise). Person praise may have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation, but it is important to be careful whenever praise is given. Teachers should focus on praising students more for their effort than for their intelligence.
Both the text and Jackie mentioned that intrinsic motivation declines as students get older. How then, can a 10th grade teacher effectively and intrinsically motivate their students?
A teacher can easily cause learned helplessness in a student if the teacher praises the student for their intelligence rather than their effort. If it is a very easy assignment, the student may feel that the teacher is being condescending, or the student may feel that they do not need to work hard in order to receive praise or good grades. If the work is challenging, the student may feel pressure to do well or even better on the next assignment, and if they do not, learned helplessness may develop.
We'll be talking about your question (intrinsicially motivating students who might be dependent on things like grades) next week.
ReplyDeleteLocus of control is very similar to what's discussed in attribution theory, so keep an eye out for that.
I like your example of unintentional learned helplessness. Praising intelligence causes that feeling often simply because intelligence (as most people define it) is something inherent and uncontrollable.