Motivation

How can an understanding of motivational theories assist teachers to help pupils

perform as well as possible?

“The pupils in my class are lazy. I can’t make them do anything.” How can this
teacher motivate her pupils?

Explain why educators should be interested in intrinsic motivation and what

they can do to promote it.

Should teachers use different approaches to motivate primary and secondary

school students?

Aims:
 To develop your understanding of motivation and how educational
psychologists use their knowledge of motivation theories to support
young people in educational settings
 Consider what motivation is
 Consider how we measure motivation
 Present theories of motivation to develop an understanding of the types
and differences in student motivation
 Consider ways in which motivational theory can be applied to enhance
student learning
Why is it important to consider motivation?
 Describing a child as “lazy” is not helpful in educational settings, not
supportive to their growth
What is motivation?
 Motivation is one of the three traditional spheres of mental activity (along
with affect and cognition) that concerns basic urges such as hunger, thirst,
and more complex goal-directed activities such as the pursuit of
friendship, achievement, or power
 Motivation is the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and
sustained
 It is helpful to regard motivation as a process rather than a product. We
cannot see it. We can only infer it from the behaviours we observe. This
might be in terms of choices made, effort applied, how long something is
carried out for, and what we say about it
Assessing motivation
 Can use indexes of motivation – choice of task, effort, persistence,
achievement
 Methods of assessment – direct observation, ratings by others, self-
reports.
 Aim is to get a wholistic view of motivation, beyond just what is seen in
the classroom
 Multidimensional measure of children’s perceptions of control (MMCPC)
(Connell, 1985)
  Pupil’s feelings about School Work Inventory (PFSSW) (Entwistle, Kozeki,
& Tait, 1989)
 Motivation to reading questionnaire (MRQ) (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997)
 Questionnaire for identifying behavioural problems associated with
maladaptive motivational style (Leo & Galloway, 1994)
Theories of motivation
Approaches Source of Important Key Theorists
motivation influences
Behavioural Extrinsic Re-inforcers, Skinner
reinforcement rewards,
incentives
Social learning Extrinsic and Value of goals, Bandura
intrinsic expectations of
reinforcement reaching goals
Cognitive Intrinsic Beliefs, Weiner, Covington
reinforcement attributions for
success and
failure,
expectations
Humanistic Intrinsic Need for self Maslow, Deci
reinforcement esteem, self
fulfilment and
self-determination

Attribution theory
 Cognitive theory
 Based on the metaphor that humans are “god-like” – they are conscious,
rational decision makers
 People want to understand their environment and themselves. This is
their goals and the main instigator for their behaviour
 People want to understand the causal determinants of their own and
others’ behaviour
 The cause of an event might be attributed to the person, stimulus, or
occasion
 Attributions made using information about consensus, distinctiveness,
and consistency
 The way we make judgements also determines our locus, stability, and
controllability
 Helps teachers understand how pupils’ perceptions of success or failure
an influence whether they succeed in the future
 Weiner, 1995 – 3-dimensional classification of attributions for success
and failure: ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, poor teaching, strategy used
 can all be classified into internal/external, stable/unstable, and
controllable/uncontrollable
 Cognitive model of motivation. It is based on the metaphor of the naïve
scientist and assumes that an individual will use a number of sources of
information to make inferences, or attributions, about the causal
determinants of behaviour. This information can come from the
 environment and from within the individual. The theory suggests that the
individual will attempt t detect co-variation between causes and effects
(Heider, 1958)
Attribution theory: implications for teaching and learning
 Knowledge of this model will help teachers to understand how pupil’s
perception of their success or failure can influence whether or not they
expect to succeed in future tasks, how they feel about themselves as
learners and how they subsequently go about learning
 Teachers can avoid making biased attributions themselves. For example,
teachers may tend to attribute pupil’s poor behaviour to fixed traits,
which makes it less likely that they will play a part in trying to support the
young person to improve that behaviour.
 Accurate and precise feedback from teachers will help pupils to learn to
give accurate attributions about their own success or failures
 Formal interventions can help pupils to stop making maladaptive
attributions. It’s best if pupils make attributions for failure to effort, which
is controllable and unstable
Goal orientation theory
 Developed specifically to explain children’s learning and performance on
academic tasks
 A number of different theories but the underlying construct is goal
orientation – the reasons for engaging in achievement behaviour an
integrated pattern of beliefs leads to “different ways of approaching,
engaging in, and responding to achievement situations” (Ames, 1991)
 Dweck (1986) is a key player in this field
 It is about our attitude towards gaining knowledge and skills
 The work on goal theory has differentiated three types of goals:
o Mastery goals (also called learning goals) which focus on gaining
competence or mastering a new set of knowledge or skills
o Performance goals (also called ego-involvement goals) which focus
on achieving normative-based standards, doing better than others,
or doing well without a lot of effort
o Social goals, which focus on relationships among people (think
about the impact of social media on these goals?)
 Students with mastery goals tend to outperform those who prioritize the
other two goal types in the context of school learning
 However, in life success, it seems critical that individuals have all three
types of goals in order to be successful.
 Goal orientation gives an indication of the way an individual judges failure
or success. This can impact the attributions they make and the emotions
they feel as well as their performance
 According to Dweck (2000), goal orientation is a function of an
individual’s view of the nature of intelligence:
o An entity theorist (intelligence is fixed) will adopt a performance
goal orientation. If they are confident in their intelligence they will
be mastery oriented – seek challenges and keep persisting. If they
are not confident they will be helpless and will avoid challenge and
will not persist. Attributions will be maladaptive and helpless.
 o An incremental theorist (intelligence is changeable) will adopt a
learning goal orientation. If they are high or low in confidence they
will be mastery oriented. They will be likely to learn. Attributions
will be positive and adaptive.
Goal orientation theory: implications for teaching and learning (Ames, 1991)
 Task and learning activities
 Evaluation practices and the use of rewards
 Balance of authority and responsibility
Self determination theory
 The process of utilizing one’s will (Deci and Ryan, 1985)
 Will is the ability to satisfy one’s needs
 Intrinsic motivation is the “need to be competent and self-determining in
relation to the environment”
 Intrinsic motivation encourages people to seek out challenges and to
master them. These challenges must be achievable for the individual to
feel competent
 Individuals want to feel self-determined responsible for the actions and
their choices
 The idea is that the more an activity helps us feel competent the more we
are motivated to do that activity: the more an activity helps us to feel we
are autonomous and we have a choice, the more we are motivated from
within to do that activity (Deci and Ryan, 2000)
Self-determination theory: self-regulatory styles
 External: child or adult behaves to obtain rewards or avoid sanctions
administered by others – e.g. a child who works only when the threat of
detention is made.
 Introjection: child or adult responds to self-administered approval or
disapproval, a feeling that our conscience is forcing us to do something,
e.g. a child who only works in order to not feel as if they are disappointing
the teacher
 Identification: child or adult identifies with the outcome of the behaviour
– e.g. a child who works in order to learn more
 Intrinsic: child or adult chooses to engage in the behaviour for its own
sake – e.g. a child asks to do more maths because he/she enjoys it
4 sources of intrinsic motivation:
 Challenge
 Curiosity
 Control
 Fantasy
Self-determination theory: implications for teaching and learning
 Minimize reliance on extrinsic reinforcers
 Present rules and instructions in an informational manner
Motivational interventions that work
 Recognize the importance of theoretical frameworks
 Build on foundations of positive social relations with peers and teachers
 Show consideration of developmental and cultural issues in their design
 Recognize the need for good quality effectiveness research