| |
Motivation Page |
||
| Topics
Motivation |
There are many ways to define motivation. Brophy (1987), for one, defines
motivation as either a trait, an enduring disposition to strive for content knowledge and
skill mastery in learning situations, or a state in which student engagement in a
particular activity is guided by the intention of acquiring the knowledge or skill that
the activity is designed to teach. There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. An intrinsically motivated student learns for the sake of learning. The student's goals are to improve competence, understand things, expand personal knowledge, or achieve mastery of tasks or subject matter. The student believes that effort leads to success, and feels pride in accomplishing goals. The student will often attribute failure to a lack of effort. An extrinsically motivated student is more likely to choose goals that are easy to accomplish with the least possible effort and may minimize effort expended by guessing, copying, or getting help from others. The student's focus is on demonstrating competence compared to others and is not on learning. Success is often attributed to being more clever than others, to pulling one over on the teacher, or to being lucky. Here is a sample of web pages that help to answer the question, "How can we, as teachers, motivate our students (or better yet, help them motivate themselves) to learn?". The First of the Life Skills Standards of the Horry County Schools. Other interesting topics related to motivation are assessing student motivation orientation and its effect on learning behaviours and the impact of the classroom and teaching environment on motivation. Other sites of potential interest: The Mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory, specifically, the page called Understanding the Keys to Motivation to Learn |
 Dr. Crawford, Cathy
and Maya |