Eli McGlothern

Motivation

Sources

Elliot Eisner

• “The Art and Craft of Teaching” 1983• emeritus professor of Art and Education at the

Stanford Graduate School of Education. He is active in several fields including arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research, and is the recipient of a University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in 2005 for his work in education

Ellen A. Skinner

• “Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year”

• Ph.D., Professor of Human Development, Department of Psychology, Portland State University

Karin Kirk

• “Student Motivations and Attitudes”• Geosciences Content Developer, Carleton

College

Your Attitude Matters

“Strong empirical support was found for a reciprocal relationship between teachers’ behavior and students’ engagement in the classroom. Teachers interaction with students predicted student behavioral and emotional engagement in the classroom, both directly and through their effects on students’ perceptions of their interactions with teachers.” Skinner

If Your Happy …..

“What constitutes a stimulus depends not simply on what is injected in the class room but what students take from it. And what various students take from the classroom and what they make of what they take differs. It differs because of their prior experiences, their capabilities, their friends, their predispositions, and their relationship with the teacher” Eisner

Keep yourself motivated!

“Teachers need the psychological space and the permission to maintain a sense of excitement and discovery for themselves as teachers so that such excitement can be shared with their students.” Eisner

Lesson and Project Plans

“Students behavioral engagement is primarily a function of student perceptions of teacher structure. Students who experience their teachers as providing clear expectations, contingent responses, and strategic help are more likely to be more effortful and persistent.” Skinner

“Teachers responded more negatively to children who expressed negative emotional engagement. Also, given the high correlation between student behavioral and emotional engagement, it is likely that most students who have low engagement will receive subsequently less teacher support” Skinner 579

The Unmotivated Student

“First, student passivity is aversive. It may make a teacher feel incompetent or unliked by a student. As a result, teachers might like students less and so prefer to spend less time with a student (increased neglect). In addition, passivity can be interpreted as a lack of internal motivation, which leads teachers to apply external pressure to participate in classroom activates (increased coercion). It should be noted that these reactions to student passivity are natural and are elicited across a variety of settings and roles.” Skinner

Some Tips

“Teachers have a lot to do with their students' motivational level. A student may arrive in class with a certain degree of motivation. But the teacher's behavior and teaching style, the structure of the course, the nature of the assignments and informal interactions with students all have a large effect on student motivation. We may have heard the utterance, "my students are so unmotivated!" and the good news is that there's a lot that we can do to change that.”

Karin Kirk

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation

• Intrinsic motivation arises from a desire to learn a topic due to its inherent interests, for self-fulfillment, enjoyment and to achieve a mastery of the subject.

• Extrinsic motivation is motivation to perform and succeed for the sake of accomplishing a specific result or outcome.

Meet Them Where They Live

“In order to foster intrinsic motivation, try to create learning activities that are based on topics that are relevant to your students' lives. Strategies include using local examples, teaching with events in the news, using pop culture technology (iPods, cell phones, YouTube videos) to teach, or connecting the subject with your students' culture, outside interests or social lives.” Kirk

Challenge Them

“Students perform best when the level of difficulty is slightly above their current ability level. If the task is to easy, it promotes boredom and may communicate a message of low expectations or a sense that the teacher believes the student is not capable of better work. A task that is too difficult may be seen as unattainable, may undermine self-efficacy, and may create anxiety. Scaffolding is one instructional technique where the challenge level is gradually raised as students are capable of more complex tasks.”

Provide Choices

“Students can have increased motivation when they feel some sense of autonomy in the learning process, and that motivation declines when students have no voice in the class structure. Giving your students options can be as simple as letting them pick their lab partners or select from alternate assignments, or as complex as "contract teaching" wherein students can determine their own grading scale, due dates and assignments” Kirk

Sense of Belonging

“People have a fundamental need to feel connected or related to other people. In an academic environment, research shows that students who feel they 'belong' have a higher degree of intrinsic motivation and academic confidence. According to students, their sense of belonging is fostered by an instructor that demonstrates warmth and openness, encourages student participation, is enthusiastic, friendly and helpful, and is organized and prepared for class.” Kirk

Be Supportive!

“A supportive teaching style that allows for student autonomy can foster increased student interest, enjoyment, engagement and performance. Supportive teacher behaviors include listening, giving hints and encouragement, being responsive to student questions and showing empathy for students.”Kirk