Chelsea Mason

Learning Theories and Applications, EDUF 7130

2/3/2019
M3, Frustrated Teacher

I) ANALYSIS OF PROBLEM:
According to the case of the frustrated teacher there is a clear problem in using the strategies
of the behavioral view of learning. Specifically, in this case the teacher has continuously used
candy, popcorn, and pizza to reward her students for doing their work. Consequentially, her
students have grown accustomed to receiving the rewards and have now increasingly
requested confirmation or verification of rewards before completing their work.

a) Behavioral Description of the Problem In Ms. Mason’s English 1 language arts class,
she noticed that students would not complete their Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
classwork. Instead of doing work for the class, her student spent their time talking, eating
and texting. After learning about her students’ favorite treats (candy, popcorn, pizza) Ms.
Mason decided that she would use this to get student to complete their work. She would
bring a special treat to class and give them out to the students who completed their work,
with minimal redirection. This worked for a while, as Ms. Mason would bring candy
some days, and pizza on other days. However, her students started rushing to complete
their work, or copy their classmates answers just to make sure they would get the treat.
Also, eventually her students started getting restless and expect treats, in exchange for
their work, instead of it as a reward for the accomplishment. Ms. Mason’s students
started to only complete their work if they knew they were getting the exact treat that
they wanted. For example, if Ms. Mason brought in chocolate, her students would
question “You should’ve brought pizza.” Her students became reliant on rewards and
were not motivated to complete assignments to understand or gain knowledge. Ms.
Mason realized that the strategy she had implemented was failing. If Ms. Mason had gone
from rewarding continuously and then intermittently, her students would not have
become dependent on the rewards.

b) Psychological Analysis of the Problem Psychologically, motivation can take two forms.
Intrinsic motivation outlines that students should be motivated by internal rewards such
as the feeling you get for accomplishing something. Extrinsic motivation can be defined
through the use of external rewards such as tangible items. Both intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation are useful strategies to use however there must be a balance to avoid
dependency. Dependency on extrinsic motivation for example can cause the validity of
intrinsic motivation to be weakened which causes what is known as the discounting
principle. In this case now that there has been a reliance on tangible rewards for
motivation, it will be hard to intrinsically motivate. Ms. Mason has continuously
 rewarded students with materials and now, she is unable to motivate her students in
another way.

II) EXPLANATION OF CONCEPT

Often students rely on their teachers as a source of motivation in the classroom. The
overarching types of motivation are intrinsic and extrinsic which stem from the words
internal and external. Intrinsic motivation references being internally motivated. This can be
explained best by taking ownership and having pride in accomplishments, and being
motivated by the idea of accomplishing something. Different types of intrinsic strategies are:
choice, challenge, curiosity, fantasy, and variety. When you have an interest or a given
choice in something, it is more likely that you will push yourself harder to get it done, and
get it done to the best of your abilities. This proves true as well for challenging tasks, where
students are motivated to complete the task and even master it. Especially for challenging
tasks, students are introduced to unfamiliar territory which causes student to let their
curiosity roam and help them find the solution. Allowing curiosity allows for students to dig
delve deeper and find a solution, which can be a fun and exciting process. Exploring
curiosity introduces a fun aspect of learning and causes students to want to learn more. For
example, in learning about climate, you learn about rain, a curious mind might start asking
question like “where does the water come from,” “how do the clouds hold the rain” which
might cause you to start looking for even more information, even if there is no assignment
attached. Like curiosity, fantasy allows students to get excited and interested in a topic by
relying on sparking their imagination. This could easily be implemented by doing free-writes,
or word association charts. Variety in the type of assignments keep students excited to learn
and use new learning techniques. The benefit of intrinsic motivation is that students learn to
have pride and ownership of their work, coupled with a level of self-confidence. This
contrasts with extrinsic motivation which puts accomplishments and an actual reward side by
side. In the ideal use of extrinsic motivation, rewards should be continuous and then more
random, to keep students motivated otherwise it can have an adverse effect. Additionally, if
you have had extrinsic motivation and received rewards upon rewards, it will be harder to
find any reason to invest in your work just because it will make you feel great, because now
you’re expecting to be rewarded, and this is the discounting principle at play. You will most
likely associate your task completion with the fact that you earned a reward.

III) APPLICATION OF CONCEPT

a) First General Recommendation I recommend that Ms. Mason use this first
recommendation, giving her students a choice, because it will her students have a sense
of responsibly in their learning and a greater stake in the subject.

First Specific Applications Ms. Mason should assign her students a literary critique
project where they choose a literary piece of work (book, movie, poem, etc.) and critique
it using themes from Romero and Juliet. Example of themes could be: Unrequited love,
 Family, Deception, etc. This activity would require Ms. Mason to provide a list of themes
for students, so that they could easily think of a literary work that shares similar themes.
This would give students a chance to choose something that interests them and apply the
learning objective in a way that makes sense. The student will be more invested in the
topic because they will be discussing something of importance or high interest to them.
For example, Romeo and Juliet was hard to understand and could be boring to read but if
I chose my favorite movie Beauty and the Beast, I would be excited to talk all about the
movie, and I would easily be able to talk about unrequited love, family, and deception.
After the assignment students should be able to understand the themes and the
implication of the themes.

b) Second General Recommendation I recommend that Ms. Mason use this second
recommendation, variety, because it will allow her student to stay excited to learn and
surprised.

c) Second Specific Applications Ms. Mason should incorporate learning stations to present
the topics of Romeo and Juliet. For example, Ms. Mason can make different stations:
station 1 students assign roles and act out a scene from the play, station 2 where students
draw a scene as a social media post with hashtags and caption to summarize a scene,
station 3 students use dictionary to define words from Romeo and Juliet. This would give
her students information in multiple ways. This could be implemented over the span of a
couple classes or within one class period, where students rotate from station to station in
small groups.

IV)PERSONAL TRANSFER OF CONCEPT

In my experience in an English 1 language arts class my students lacked a personal
motivation to do well, for many different reasons. My main goal in working with them was to
instill that sense of pride in achievement. I incorporated intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
One example of intrinsic motivation revolved around variety, some of the activities I did with
my students took place in the hallway, the library, theater or courtyard. Specific activities
were picking and defining words off the word wall that was listed outside another teacher’s
class room, or acting out scenes from plays on the courtyard’s stage. This created a sense of
excitement to work. I also incorporated extrinsic motivation through awarding candy. I chose
my students favorite candy “paleta” (spicy lollipop) and would award the candy to the 3-5
student who completed work, participated in class, volunteered and behaved well. This
strategy worked well, my students all wanted to win the paleta. My biggest take away from
the case study is that you can incorporate both types of motivation, it is easy to get carried
away with extrinsic motivation, but it can be very beneficial.