Dirk bissbort motivation and self-regulation (handout)

Motivation in Learning and Education

IPPI course, 18/11/2011held by Dirk Bissbort

LET, Faculty of EducationUniversity of Oulu

Overview• Education - definition and aims• Learning - definition and characteristics• Aims of higher education• Motivational Constructs and self-regulated learning

– Goal orientation, Interest, Self-efficacy, Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Task values, Self-efficacy and outcome beliefs, Future time perspective, Volition and SRL, Causal attributions (9)

• A Cyclical View of Motivation during SRL– Forethought phase sources of motivation– Performance phase sources of motivation– Self-reflection phase sources of motivation

• Intervention studies• Implications for instructional practice• Literature: Zimmerman (2011)

• What is my understanding of education?• What is the aim of education, in my view?

Education

• There exists a variety of definitions of education, one of them is descriptive:

Education is social action of human who try to improve the psychic dispositions of other human in some way or to maintain it‘s valuable components.

(Brezinka,1975)

Learning – a Definition

• „Learning is an enduring change in behavior, or in the capacity to behave in a given fashion, which results from practice or other forms of experience.“ (Schunck 1999)

Three characteristics of learning: 1. Permanent oder latent behavioral change; new

or modified ways of behavior2. Long lasting effects of learning3. Aspect of practice and experience

Aim of Higher Education: The autonomous learnerWhat does autonomous person mean? Autonomous persons • Select work and life challenges that are in

direction of their personal and professional aims

• Find ways to face challenges and know how to solve problems in working and learning

• Think critically and reflect on issues• Create new ideas and solutions • Collaborate and communicate with others• Take responsibility for the consequences of

their acting

A key skill of autonomous learners is self-regulated learning

• Self-regulated students set learning goals, choose content and strategies and regulate the involved cognitive, meta-cognitive, motivational and emotional processes (e.g. Boekaerts 1999, 2000; Knowles, 1975; Nenniger, 1999Schunk, Zimmerman, Winne, & Alexander, 2006)

What are less self-regulated learners?• Learning is less self-regulated, if others like the

teacher or the parents monitor or regulate some of the related processes

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and Motivation

• How can students attain academic competence and control?

• How can students avoid low levels of learning and performance caused by procrastination ? – Procrastination is delaying things to the last

minute by spending a lot of effort in doing other things than learning (tidying up all, etc.)

– Reasons for procrastination may vary: Stress, too high demands, lazyness, lacking motivation, lacking discipline, bad time management, lacking skills, perfectionism


Research seeks to understand: • Why do some students self-regulate and others do

not?– Where question Performance and Task context– How question metacognitive aspects of SRL– Why question motivational aspects of SRL

How Students may not be able to monitor how well a strategy is working for them

Why Students may not enjoy using a strategy or may feel the gains are not worth the effort (deficiency in self-satisfaction/affect, or low outcome expectancy)


Students are self-regulated to the degree they are active participants in their own learning processes:

1. metacognitive processes include goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-evaluative feedback loops.

2. motivational processes - Motivational feelings and beliefs refer to selfregulated learners’ display of personal initiative, perseverance, and adaptive skill.

3. behavioral processes • self-regulation refers to specifi c benefi cial actions,

such as record keeping, environmental• structuring, and help-seeking.

Role of Motivation in SRL

Why are positive motivational feelings and beliefs advantageous for students to self-regulate their learning?

• To increase students‘ attention to learning processes and outcomes

• high motivation can also increase students’ choice of a task

• high motivation can also increase students’ effort to learn a difficult task

• Fourth, high motivation can also increase students’ persistence on a time-consuming task

students’ level of motivation can play a vital role in initiating, guiding, and sustaining students’ efforts to self-regulate their learning

Key motivational constructsgoal orientation theories

What are the sources of enhanced motivation ?

Goal orientation theories: • performance goal orientation: to gain positive

judgments of one’s current level of personal competence and avoid negative judgments

• Learning goal orientiation: to gain positive self-judgments by actually increasing one’s competence

Key motivational constructs goal orientation theories

What causes students to set learning goals rather than performance goals for themselves?

• A performance goal orientation reflects a fixed mindset based on an entity assumption (i.e., intelligence is fixed)Consequences for SRL: confident learners to seek opportunities to demonstrate their abilities but will discourage insecure learners and lead to feelings of helplessness

• A learning goal orientation reflects a growth mindset and is based on an incremental assumption (i.e., intelligence is extendable) This motivates both confident and insecure learners to seek opportunities to improve their abilities

• Dweck and Leggett (1988); Dweck (2006)

Key motivational constructs goal orientation theories and SRL

• Implications on students’ motivation to self-regulate: Students with a learning goal seek self-improvement whereas insecure students with a performance goal avoid unfavorable social comparisons with others

• Experiment: students were given lessons in self-regulatory study skills, such as goal setting, time management, math study strategies, and memory tips. Those students who were taught that the brain becomes smarter when they persist when facing difficulty, could improve their mathematics skills. In contrast, students who were not taught this, did not improve. Other math studies

Key motivational constructs Interest and SRL

• Interest is an important aspect of motivation and learning since Herbart and Dewey

• Studies have identified two types of interest, situational and individual interest (Hidi & Ainley, 2008)– situational interest is activity-specifi c form

of motivation that does not usually transfer beyond the immediate context

– individual interest, is a relatively enduring predisposition to choose and engage in specifi c activities, objects, or ideas in diverse contexts


Four phase progression leading to self-regulation (Hidi & Ainley, 2008)

• In Phase 1 - situational interest is triggered spontaneously, such as by a decision to accompany a friend who is a tennis player to a park

• During phase 2, students’ situational interests are maintained by the environment, such as by friendly tennis players at the park. The last two phases involve personal interests.


Four phase progression leading to self-regulation (Hidi & Ainley, 2008)

• During phase 3, a student begins to seek repeated engagement with a task or activity in the absence of external supports, such as signing up for tennis lessons. It is at this point in the development of interest that SRL becomes possible.

• During phase 4, a well-developed interest leads individuals to proactively seek out opportunities to engage in and identify personally with a task or activity, such as when a tennis player aspires to develop a high level of skill. This fourth phase of interest is viewed as highly supportive of self-regulated efforts to learn (Hidi & Ainley (2008).


Both situational and individual interest are positive initiators for SRL,

• interest is positively related to the use of self-regulatory strategies, elaboration, seeking information, critical thinking, and spending time and effort; Schiefele 1992)

Key motivational constructs Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and SRL

Self-determination theory: perceived role of rewards on students’ valuing of an activity

• rewards have a controlling function (to complete a task) and an informing function (provide information about a person’s competence and autonomy)

• In contexts where the controlling function is more perceived, students will shift their perceived locus of control of an activity towards external or extrinsic motivation, which refers to the instrumental value of an activity in attaining other outcomes.


Self-determination researchers• In contexts where the informing function is

salient, students will change their locus of control attributions toward internal or intrinsic forms of motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to one’s interest in, enjoyment of, and satisfaction with a task or activity

Intrinsic motivation and two internal forms of extrinsic motivation are viewed as advantageous for sustaining learning.


A key self-determination concept regarding students’ self-regulation is autonomous self-regulation, in which students initiate and persist because they can choose learning tasks that are interesting or personally important to them.


To enhance autonomous self-regulation, self-determination researchers (Reeve et al., 2008) recommend helping students

• set their own goals,• direct their own behavior, seek out optimal

challenges, pursue their own interest and values,• choose their own way to solve problems, to think

more flexibly and more actively,

• use more mature coping strategies, and experience more positive feelings about themselves and their learning.


Research (Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci, 2004) shows that students who had been induced to adopt an intrinsic goal

• displayed greater persistence, deeper learning,• and better transfer than students who adopted

an extrinsic goal. • Clearly, these measures of autonomous

learning are linked causally to students’ intrinsic motives.

Key motivational constructs Task values and SRL

• students’ perceived worth of a particular taskExpectancy-Value theory: • 4 major classes of values:

– Attainment value, refers to students’ perceptions of competence on a particular task

– Intrinsic value reflects the immediate enjoyment from a task

– Utility beliefs refer to the functional value of a task – Costs, refers to the perceived consequences of

pursuing a valued task (time and effort)

• Expectancy to be able to accomplish an activity successfully


Relations to students’ efforts to self-regulate their learning:

• When students value the importance of a task or activity, they choose to perform it more often.

• In contrast, when the costs of an activity were high, students were less likely to engage in it.

• Task values of middle school students are related to their use of cognitive strategies and other self-regulatory processes (Pintrich and De Groot, 1990).

• Students’ task value ratings predicted their use of cognitive and self-regulatory strategies significantly, but these ratings did not predict their academic performance (Wolters & Pintrich, 1998)


Researchers have shown that • Students’ task values are also related to their goal

orientation. • Students’ learning goal orientations and self-

evaluations were related positively to their task values and use of cognitive and SRL strategies (Wolters, Yu, and Pintrich, 1996).

• Conversely, students with a performance goal orientation displayed lower task values and less use of SRL strategies.

• Clearly, when students value an academic task positively, they are more likely to use self-regulated processes to learn it.

Key motivational constructs Self-efficacy and outcome beliefs and SRL

• Self-efficacy refers to expectancies about personal capabilities to organize and execute courses of action

• outcome expectancy refers to the results of one’s actions

• It is hypothesized that self-efficacy beliefs are predictive of diverse motivational outcomes, such as students’ choice of activities, expenditure of effort, and persistence.

• Students who are confident about their capabilities are expected to work harder and persist longer than students who doubt their capabilities.

Key motivational constructs Self-efficacy and outcome beliefs and SRL

• Pajares (2008) has found that academic self-effi cacy beliefs infl uence diverse aspects of self-regulation.

• Self-efficacious students use more cognitive and metacognitive strategies, work harder, and persevere longer in the face of adversity than self-doubters.

• Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1990) reported that students’ self-effi cacy regarding mathematics was positively related to their use of the SRL strategy of reviewing notes and negatively related to non-adaptive forms of help seeking from adults

Key motivational constructs Future time perspective (FTP) and SRL

• students’ beliefs about subsequent outcomes of efforts to self-regulate.

• Future time theorists view self-regulation in terms of a conflict between immediate and delayed outcomes, such as when students have to give up pleasurable activities (e.g., watching TV) to study for an important exam.

• Students with a long FTP should remain motivated longer than those with a short FTP

• Clearly, a future time perspective is a key motive for students’ to self-regulate their learning

Key motivational constructs Volition and SRL

• Volitional processes enable students’ to focus their concentration and sustain their effort in dealing with personal and environmental distractions

• Motivation refers to pre-decisional processes leading to one’s choice of goals,

• whereas volition refers to post-decisional processes dealing with the implementation of strategies and attainment of one’s goals (Corno, 2001)

• self-regulated learners use volitional strategies (“action control“) to protect their goal-related intentions from detrimental cognitions, emotions, and motives

Key motivational constructs Causal attributions and SRL

• Attribution theories focus on the perceived causes of personal outcomes as sources of motivation.

• Students’ attributions are classified by Weiner (1992) in terms of three causal dimensions: locus, stability, and control. – Locus refers to the perceived cause of a

personal outcome as internal or external– Stability deals with the perceived cause of an

outcome as changeable (i.e., unstable) or enduring (i.e., stable)

– control pertains to the likelihood that the cause is personally controllable

A cyclical view of Motivation during SRL

How are the sources of motivation linked conceptually to other sources of motivation as well as to specific metacognitive processes?

An integrative theoretical model of 3 cyclic phases (Bandura, 1997; Schunk, 2001; Zimmerman, 2000):

Intervention Studies on SRL

• A meta-analysis (Dignath, Buettner, & Langfeldt, 2008) revealed that most of the self-regulation intervention studies produced not only gains in students’ academic performance but also in their strategic behavior and motivation

Implications of SRL and Motivation Research for instructional practice

• SRL intervention can be very challenging.• Self-regulatory strategies, such as creating an

outline before writing an essay, often require additional time and effort, especially at the outset of skill development.

• SRL instructors must be prepared to motivate passive students to spend extra effort to implement self-regulatory processes properly.

• SRL strategy training can enhance many forms of motivation, such as students’ self-efficacy beliefs and causal attributions, but often the effectiveness of this training is delayed because of the need for repeated cycles of studying or practice.


• Advocating social learning experiences like the use of parental, instructor, or peer models (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997)

• Learners’ adaptive help seeking has been found to be an important SRL skill (Newman, 2008)

• Making a learning task more interesting• enhance students’ interest by using puzzles or

computers have been found to activate but not to hold their interest (Mitchell, 1993)

• Students encouraged to be autonomous may choose to avoid “basic” aspects of learning, and this decision could undermine the emergence of long-term forms of motivation


• There is evidence that encouraging students to set diffi cult goals for themselves can signifi cantly increase their motivation and performance (Locke & Latham, 2002).

• Operant instructors advocate the use of rewards and praise to induce poorly motivated students to SRL

• Praise has been found to work well, but tangible rewards have been criticized for undermining long-term motivation to learn on one’s own

• the effects of tangible rewards on students’ motivation are positive if they are given contingently for increasing personal skill. Such rewards can motivate by conveying personal competence information and by enhancing personal identification, a desirable form of extrinsic motivation.

Thank you

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