Chapter 10: Motivation

by April

I found this chapter to be very interesting because I have heard so many conflicting views about encouraging intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation in school. For example, when I was teaching at the preschool it was discouraged to say, "good job." The reasoning was that the student would then feel motivated to please the teacher rather than to work for themselves. After reading the chapter, I certainly agree that the best chances for student success come from intrinsic motivation, however, I also appreciated the fact that the text pointed out that not all students are going to come in excited and ready to learn. If we count on that, we will end up disappointed and frustrated.

Going back to my original thought about saying, "good job," I think a better way to give praise or feedback would be to say something like, "I see that your understanding of subtraction has really improved." This way the feedback is positive and points out a students progress so they can see themselves having successes and then be motivated by the success rather than how I feel about their success. Actually I think the text talks about this a little in regards to using controlling statements verses simply providing information.

I have really seen this issue of control play out in the past, especially in terms of classroom behavior. Students do not like to feel like you are controlling everything. They need for us to give them as much autonomy as possible while still providing some guidelines and structure. There should be a balance. As a student myself, I am very uncomfortable with completely wide open tasks. That is probably why I didn't choose to do any of the "student-designed" tasks for this class. I liked being able to choose from a variety of possibilities with some listed guidelines. I can really see the effectiveness of this in an elementary school classroom where there is often a struggle between teacher and students for control. Allowing students to make choices gives them some ownership of their learning. For example, I could see giving students a variety of options for topics for a writing assignment or perhaps even a variety of forms of writing that could be used to respond. Perhaps they choose to write a report about what happened when Mt. Vesuvius erupted or perhaps they would take the point of view of someone living at that time and write a fictional story about what it would have been like to be there.

Also, I was really thinking about the anxiety issues related to the WASL and how it seems, from this reading, that the WASL can be really damaging to student motivation. When teachers are teaching to the test and telling students what they need to know for the test, the motivation is scores rather than developing an understanding that this knowledge has utility in real life (authentic tasks). This takes away the possibility for teachers to help their students have a sense of wonder and curiosity and it causes stress and anxiety for students making learning an unhappy experience.