What were some misconceptions you may have held about student motivation? How do you plan to address those misconceptions in your courses? Be specific – what concrete changes will you make?
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7 thoughts on “Topic 2: Motivation & Persistence”
I don’t remember my misconceptions anymore because I have been teaching about the value of intrinsic motivation for years . But there were a few important reminders and discoveries. For example, something that has been reinforced in the past week is that making a difference does not necessarily require a huge change. Sometimes a small thing can have a profound effect. This is definitely true about students’ motivation, which at times so fragile but also responsive to what we as faculty do. I really liked Dr. Jaffe’s idea of writing affirmation in the beginning of some assignments. I was also reminded about the importance of framing certain messages and addressing students in friendly and respectful ways. Teaching in the past couple of years has been challenging, because students do not show up, drop off, and are overall less engaged. There were a couple of times when I let my frustrations out, and I felt bad about it. I do know that students are not very responsive to accusatory language. Someone suggested to frame one’s concern as something like, “what is happening with you guys? How can we get you back on track?” I also found really interesting when Dr. Hernandez mentioned that some Latinx students did not feel that choosing their assignment was a sign of their teachers’ care the same way that White students did. The issues of autonomy are complex, and context/culture-dependent. In my experience, some students do get lost with too many options. So I think that whereas we should provide students with choices regarding their assignments, assessments, and even deadlines, we should be careful about providing students with too many options, or give students more structure if they ask for it.
I think I’m pretty decently-versed in motivation theory and literature, so I don’t know of any misconceptions that I still hold. However, there’s a difference between knowing it and practicing it. I sometimes catch myself putting my motivations for students on them rather than responding to their own motivations. For example, I do try to do my best on tasks, within the constraints of the moment. But not everyone operates like that. Plenty of people operate on the “good enough” principle. They don’t need the A, even if they actually could get it (the situation provides for the work that must go into that outcome). So then I’m frustrated because I know what *could* be and frankly, some are ok with what *is.* It doesn’t mean that they are amotivated or demotivated but simply that their motivations may be different from mine or what I think they’re supposed to do. Thinking about actual actions that I plan to take in my courses, in Intro in particular, I want their first assignment to be thinking about and reporting on their motivations. They can submit them as regular assignments on Blackboard. I think this will be a good first reflective activity for them and also gives me a window into what’s going on in those noggins. I’ll look to combine this with one of the activities suggested by Dr. Summers as well. I would like to focus on doing good mindset work up front.
Hi Kelly,
I think that it is a great idea to ask students for their motivations. I am wondering if also asking them for examples of how they were successful in motivating themselves when they found something challenging will be great.
I, too, have been working on motivation, mindset, and grit in my classroom for a long time. I think it is hard to know how to approach these subjects without implying that our students don’t have these traits. They are all motivated, they all have a growth mindset, and they all have grit, but not necessarily in our particular class. My goal has always been to show them how to use what they already have to reach, and potentially go beyond their goals in my class. I really enjoyed Yeager’s & Walton’s work. At the beginning of every semester, I have my students read two chapters in Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset. I used to have my students write a reflection. I would like to start doing that again, and then circle back to these ideas later in the semester as a reminder. I agree with Masha that it is easy to forget how impactful a small intervention can be. I do so many of these at the beginning of the semester, but then I don’t always follow up throughout with more than just a simple reminder. Maybe this means having students read another chapter from Dweck’s book or writing how their goals may have changed now that they have sat through a part of the course. The affirmations on their homework assignments have made a difference, and I don’t think students see them as interventions. I would also like to do better at creating a sense of belonging in my classroom. I hope to do this with my new project to solve a community problem, but I would like to find smaller scale interventions as well. Again, I find I start this in the first week with a variety of activities and giving students time to get contact information from at least one other person, but I don’t necessarily follow up.
Hi Kelly,
I think that it is a great idea to ask students for their motivations. I am wondering if also asking them for examples of how they were successful in motivating themselves when they found something challenging will be great.
The three key words from the talks were “competence, belongingness, and autonomy” and those screamed at me. How can I create this for one student, or two students, or all my students? Our group had some terrific discussions about this, especially autonomy and how to create it in a class. In future semesters, I plan to give multiple Discussion Board topics, rather than just one each week. For my asynchronous classes, I might try to have the students create weekly plans to complete the videos and coursework, offer to sit down with them and budget their time. I find even in my own life some weeks, I am doing work on the train as it’s 45 minutes of minimal distractions.
In terms of competence, I always think back to one of my professors at Teachers College. He would think about every question a person asked, no matter how trivial it might have been. “Hmm, let me think about that…” which always led me to believe it was a worthwhile question, I mean the prof had to think about it! And there was never any judgement. He made me feel competent and had strategies to get you to success without just telling you the answer.
For belongingness, I want to have my students take ownership of that! Find examples that relate to you or your culture or a line of work you are interested in! This ties back into the Discussion Board posts and making connections to their lives.
I was glad to hear faculty talking about benefits of all sorts of motivational factors. Landing with a good job to support family and make parents proud could be a very strong motivation to some students. What I want to focus on is on my attempts to encourage intrinsic motivation: thirst for knowledge is one of them. I understand that the nature of intrinsic motivation is such that it is difficult to implement it externally. However I believe that I could seed some ideas. Promoting autonomy and purpose will be one of my aims for the courses.