Student Interest &

Motivation

Disentangling the influence &

interrelations of:

Teaching practices
Student choice
Student engagement & learning strategies
Student achievement & outcomes

Image Source: http://hangzhouweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/student-interest-groups-flourish-in-

Richness
Multiple layers of
interpretation &
meaning
Ambiguity, Creative

Recursion

Return, revise
Re-evaluate
Re-consider

Relations Rigor
Interconnections
Dialogue is required

Order out of chaos

Careful exploration
of multiple
possibilities

Student
Choice

Teaching
practices
Interest &
Achievement
Motivation
& Outcomes
Student
Engagement

Choice

Engagem
ent

Interest
&
Teaching
Outcomes
Motivation

Image Source: www.historydiscussion.net

www.polartrec.com

Student
Choice

Student Choice and Motivation-Flowerday &

1. The positive effects of choice can be seen in
Shell
educational research where it has been shown
that choice can be used to support student
autonomy and intrinsic motivation.
2. The importance of interest and choice in
motivation and learning has been the central
focus of much educational and psychological
research.
3. Choice allows students to have a sense of
control.
4. Different choices also allow students to feel more
confident in their own abilities.

Two Types of Interest and Choice

Two types of interest described in the motivation literature are topic
interest and situational interest:
1. Topic interest is interest elicited by a word or paragraph describing
the subject matter or content of material and is generally stable and
content-specific.
2. Situational interest is spontaneous, transitory and environmentally
activated. Situational interest appears to arise from novelty, curiosity,
or salient informational content.

The Details of
Research
Rationale: Current theoretical formulations of choice and interest postulate
specific influence paths among topic interest, choice, situational interest and
outcomes. Choice, topic interest, and situational interest are hypothesized
to influence learning, engagement, and attitudinal outcomes, with choice
and topic interest having indirect influences on outcomes through situational
interest.
Participants: Participants were 90 students enrolled in undergraduate
educational psychology courses at a major southwestern University.
Contrast Groups:
Choice- High interest;
No choice- High interest;
No choice- Low interest
Result: Findings suggest that situational interest is the primary motivator.
Situational interest was the most important influence on learning,
engagement, and attitudes. Expanding on prior research that demonstrated
the importance of topic interest. The results suggest that topic interest
primarily works through its impact on increasing situational interest.

What has been your

experience with choice in
education?

Teaching
Practices

Image Source: www.historydiscussion.net

Image sources:
Painting: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/massys/quentin/2/
Student: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/annaroseandthesea/files/2010/07/Chained-to-desk.png
Butterfly: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8e/5e/9a/8e5e9a8ffd532e5fa269562b088a3d42.jpg

Richness

https://medium.com/@josepicardoshs/technology-and-the-death-of-civilisation-

Interest & Teaching Practices

Recursion

Recursion

urce: http://teachingenglishzone.blogspot.ca/

Relations

Relations

Rigor
Purposefully looking for different alternatives, relations or connections.
It also means searching for and identifying hidden assumptions.
The learner must account for these assumptions when one is
constructing their learning

Rigor is:

Rigor is not:

Scaffolding thinking

More or harder worksheets

Planning for thinking

Honours/advanced classes

Assessing thinking about

The higher level book in

content

reading

Recognizing the level of thinking

More work

students demonstrate

More homework

Managing the teaching/learning

Artificial tests

level for the desired thinking level

External accountability

Source:

http://www.slideshare.net/amandamacintosh79/the-four-rs-final

Question
Do you have a story to share about
how teaching practices have affected
your interest in education?

Student
Engagement

Interests and Engagement

Interest and choice are factors that
are believed to determine the
engagement of an individual to a
particular activity in a defined
environment.
Imposing choice of topics may
enhance the engagement of students
into academics, which helps students
boost their academic performance.

 Interests can be fragmented into

topic and situational interests that
are believed to influence the
engagement of students in studies
differently .
Students tend to execute more
engagement to that subject more
than their counterparts who have
previous idea.
On the other side, situational interest
is transitory, spontaneous and
environmentally activated

 The situational interest can be used

as an instrument of catching
attention of the students where the
teacher can change the learning
environments purposely (Flowerday
& Shell, 2015).
Combination of the choice and topic
interest of the student will influence
the situational interest.

 For a greater capacity, choice, topic

and situational interests impose
great effect to the level a student
commit into academics (Flowerday &
Shell, 2015).
Interests

Engageme
nt
Influenc
Academic e
Performan
ce

Social
Skills

Engagement and Montessori

Method
Montessori believe in incorporating
teaching with several factors to boost
the engagement of the students,
which raises their performance.
Montessori
Environment:

 a range of options can be generated

to give the students choice options
according to their interests
("Montessori with an Open
Approach", 2016).

Question
Do you have a story to share about
engagement and interest in education?

Achievements
& Outcomes

Question
Which one has the stronger
influence in primary school
students, interest influence
grades or grades influence
interests ?

Academic
Achievements
(Grades)

Determine future
interest
Early years

Improve interests

Student's
interests

motivation

Attitudinal
outcome
Enjoyment,
Satisfaction

Educational outcome
(Grades)
Based on age
Subjectspecificity
gender

Sense of self
control

Path coefficients between interest

and grades
In general: Grades
influence

interests = higher

Elementary school: interest

grades = lower
& insignificant.
Grades
Determine future interests, But not the
reverse.
Gender: Both gender have same extent and direction.
Higher interests in mathematics lead to lower grades in
German.

Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/894371

Why is it important?

Challenges

Accomplishments
Worked together as a team
Started with a nebulous concept and
managed to bring some order out of chaos
Careful exploration from multiple
perspectives
Incorporate creative, artistic modes of
representation
Share with others what we learned
Reflect on our pedagogical theme through
the lens of history and philosophy in
education

Conflicting Ideas &

Agreements

Closing Thoughts &

Discussion

The termikigaiis composed of two Japanese words:ikireferring to

life, andkai, which roughly means the realisation of what one
expects and hopes for
Source: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/ikigai-finding-your-reason-for-being/