Motivation Post 1

There are two different types of motivation that this chapter focuses on. First, intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that revolves a reward that does not need external incentives for some activities. Activities like reading or playing video games do not need external incentives, and therefore the reward comes from within. Extrinsic motivations revolves around participants engaging an activity to obtain an outcome that is distinct from the activity itself. This means that extrinsic motivators motivate with tangible items, like awards, stickers, prizes, etc, or also untangible things like praise, attention or recognition. As children mature, their intrinsic motivation for academic tasks decreases. This happens because in middle school children have different structured classes they attend, and a greater focus on grades, which motivates that more extrinsic. Task-contingent rewards, like a certificate or extra free time, are given for participating in an activity or completing an activity. These are controlling to students, for the student must only do what the teacher wants to get the reward, and these rewards undermine the idea of intrinsic motivation. The other reward, performance-cognitive rewards, are given for doing well or achieving a certain level of perforamnce. For example, getting a stiker for correctly completing all the math problems. These rewards are found to be informational, and are less likely to undermine intrinsic motivation. Praising students is known to improve intrinsic motivation because it is unexpected to students and allows for them to receive feedback from their teachers and feel good about themsevles. Praise also can decrease intrinsic motivation if teachers supply it too much. Praise has to me monitored because teachers don't want to overuse it to a point where is is ineffective. Teachers must work to make their classrooms intrinsically motivating. They can do this by being excited when introducing a new lesson, and showing positivity even with challenges. Providing choices, and allows time for students to complete their work, and show the finished project is important in creating positivity across the students.

My question I have about motivation is regards to person praise. Person praise involves a favorable judgement about a person's attributes or behaviors. An example of person praise would be, "You're great at science." Person praise would weaken intrinsic motivation in a classroom, and make the child not be motivated from themselves. My question is why do teachers use this still even if they know it doesn't motivate from within? Is there a way to use person praise effectively and keep with the idea of an intrinsic and extrinsic balanced motivated classroom?

Learned helplessness can happen in a classroom when a teacher praises one student for showing academic excellence on a test. A reward is okay to give for showing that the student knows the material, but a teacher must try not to praise based on the actual intelligence behind the test. If this happens, the student will feel he/she has an expectation they must meet in order to be successful in the teachers' eyes.