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17 Responses to Motivation
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For this week, I chose to read Cheon and Reeve’s article on student amotivation. To clarify, Cheon and Reeve start with a clear definition of amotivation meaning “without motivation” (p. 99). Students in this state feel there is very little reason to try to learn or accomplish anything during class time. You may recognize these students as those that fall asleep in class, stare blankly at you while you talk or give instructions, skip class, or just participate for the sake of jumping through the hoop of the classwork. Cheon and Reeve go on to contrast autonomous and controlled motivation. Autonomous motivation necessitates that the learner finds value in the work being done and is interested in the learning activity. Controlled motivation is quite the opposite. When I read the section on controlled motivation, I couldn’t help but relate back to behaviourist theory, where external rewards and punishments facilitate the learning process. External regulation and introjected regulation represent behavioural intentions of the learner to either receive an attractive (positive) incentive or to avoid an unattractive (negative) incentive. Amotivation is a multi-dimensional conceptualization around 4 key dimensions: low ability to perform a behaviour; low effort to attempt learning; low value where the activity is perceived to lack usefulness; and unappealing tasks where learners perceive the task to be unattractive to do.
Cheon and Reeve then go on to discuss self-determination theory around autonomy, competence and relatedness (p.100). If there is disruption or opposition to learners in these areas, it does not allow for a conducive atmosphere for learning. This section summarized well a very traditional type of teaching where the teacher controls the class and does not give up any control to students. In fact, students can be opposed through very negative behaviours on the part of the teacher: yelling, asserting power, using intimidation tactics, intruding on existing student beliefs, and other pressure tactics. They propose that teachers that use pressurized tactics to control their students would benefit from a teaching style that motivates students by satisfying their psychological needs. When I read this section I thought of social emotional learning, whereby students are only able to learn if their social-emotional needs are being met. If a student suffers from an abusive home life they will not be able to concentrate at school and learn. Similarly, if a student suffers from abusive behaviours from a teacher at school, characterized in this report as psychological need frustration, they will not be ready to learn or receptive to the message that the teacher is trying to convey.
With regards to motivation, it is interesting that Cheon and Reeves examine student motivation, an internal process which is correlated directly to student engagement: behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic. Later in the study, they state that they believed the four engagement scales used to assess classroom engagement were “highly positively intercorrelated” across T1, T2, and T3, that they created a single engagement index through averaging participant scores across the four aspects. All four aspects of engagement are highly interrelated but also are so different that I don’t really agree that they should have been averaged to create a single engagement index. Perhaps the researchers could have focused on each type of engagement separately to distinguish each type.
The context of the article makes a huge difference on the implementation and acceptance of an ASIP program. In BC, many teachers already implement strategies in their classrooms that support autonomy, competence, and relatedness with subject matter. BC’s refreshed curriculum enables autonomy through inquiry study, competence through self-reflection and evaluation, and relatedness to application based projects to put theory into practice. In my opinion, there are not many teachers in my school that have a controlling or pressurized style of teaching. But I do believe that amotivation does exist in the modern, westernized classroom. I know when speaking to my mom about teaching in 1970’s India, it was not uncommon for teachers to use controlling behaviors to keep students “in line”. The context was different; she taught in the 1970’s in a town in India, at an all-female college in the physical education department, primarily focusing on basketball. The cultural differences are significant, as the norms of 1970’s India were very different to 2016 Canada. I wonder what my mom would think of my classroom if she saw my strategies to engage students! I often think of my students’ parents from other countries being disconnected from the Canadian approach to teaching and learning. They may not understand or appreciate the way in which Canadian schools operate because the system they are accustomed to might be completely different. Conversely, I do believe parents in other countries recognize that BC tries to provide a different type of education not based on memorization but rather creative and critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, which is why there is such a big business in International students in my school district.
This week, I have chosen to take a look at Cheon and Reeve’s research on using something called an “autonomy-supportive intervention program” (ASIP) to find out whether more student autonomy and less teacher control would affect the levels of engagement and amotivation in students. They were able to successfully confirm their hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between student autonomy and engagement in learning as well as a positive correlation between teacher control and amotivation. As a Montessori educator who believes in following the students and letting them have control of how they learn and what they learn when, I was not too surprised by their results. In fact, since moving into a neighbourhood program classroom this year, I have experienced something that echoes with the authors’ findings.
At the beginning of the year, I established a classroom routine where after lunch my grades 7/8 students would silent read for at least 20 minutes with the intention of calming their minds before starting a lesson. At the beginning, I have had great struggles with keeping my students quiet and reading, as they often decided to chat and giggle with their neighbours when not staring blankly into their novels. I have decided to mention my concern at one of my class meetings, and explain to them the intention of silent reading. After a few rounds of discussions, it had occurred to me that silent reading was something that they didn’t like putting effort in, something that they didn’t perceive as being useful, or something that is just unappealing to them. This really matches up with three of the dimensions of amotivation that Cheon and Reeve mentioned in their work (amotivation-low effort, amotivation-low value, and amotivation-unappealing tasks). So, after listening to my students’ concerns, we decided together as a group that instead of a 20-minute silent reading period, it would be Flex time where students could either finish work, read, or even take a power nap – as long as they remain silent and independent. The result was phenomenal: by giving my students choices to participate in any of the above activities, my room was dead quiet after lunch. My students were engaged with whatever they have chosen to do – some even borrowed books from my classroom library to read!
Despite such a successful case study performed by the authors, I do have one thing that I wonder about with regards to the four dimensions of amotivation. While high school students’ amotivation for a particular activity tends to be driven by independent assessment of the activity, what about middle school students? How much of it can be attributed to peer-pressure? The fact that fitting in is a big priority in middle school students’ minds can affect their amotivation. If so, is there another intervention method to alleviate this since giving them autonomy may not be an effective way to do so?
This week, I read Cheon and Reeve’s (2015) article about Amotivation which means lack of or without motivation. Amotivation is contrasted with autonomous motivation (high levels of intrinsic motivation where intentions are behavioural) and controlled motivation (high levels of external regulation where intentions are to attract or avoid unattractive incentive). Autonomous motivation is when there is a want to do well out of the learner’s own interest or enjoyment and the learner sees the value and importance. Controlled motivation is when there is pressuring demand or emotions related to the teaching and learning.
Cheon and Reeve (2015) state that motivation is seen as invisible but can be recognized through student engagement. There are three types of engagement: behavioural engagement (attention, effort, persistence), cognitive engagement (sophisticated learning strategies applied rather than superficial), and agentic engagement (students proactively contributing to the flow of instruction and letting the teacher know what they need, want, and are interested in).
A case study was implemented in Korean schools in the PE programs. In order to promote motivation, 24 teachers were asked to participate in the autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP), but only 16 accepted and they were to change the way they delivered the curriculum to promote motivation. The results showed that the autonomy-supportive teaching was successful.
In the article, it is stated that Korean schools were chosen in this case study because the students and parents focus on the academic subjects in order to do well on University entrance exams and therefore show no motivation towards PE as they do not require it as an entrance exam. I feel that if ASIP can disintegrate amotivation and create interest and engagement, whether through behavior, cognitive, or agentic, then it should be practiced and modelled in schools. However, there was limited information in the reading regarding how the PE lessons were taught before the case study was implemented and whether the students’ lack of motivation for PE lessons was solely because it wasn’t needed for University entrance exams.
“Students experience need satisfaction when teachers are highly autonomy supportive—when teachers eagerly embrace the students’ perspectives, welcome their thoughts, feelings, and suggestions into the flow of instruction, provide explanatory rationales for their requests, offer interesting and important learning activities, and acknowledge students’ complaints and expressions of negative affect as valid and understandable ways of feeling during the learning process” (p.100). The revised BC curriculum is gearing towards this approach and the link to social and emotional needs and learning, as well as a more constructivist approach is becoming explicit. It is important for us as educators to show the value in what the students bring with them to the classroom and show our appreciation and excitement when we learn from them.
Teaching in a community school has helped me develop ways that I can teach English as a second language in an engaging and interesting way. I plan and create problem-based and inquiry-based projects with the integration of technology. As teaching now is a facilitation process, I feel that the students are more engaged and motivated when they are occasionally given the driver’s seat. I’ve actually learned new things from my students and I see their expression of surprise and sense of achievement. This in itself is motivation, when a student feels they can contribute to the class and share information that the teacher may not already know. This encourages them to find out more and share more. Project-based and inquiry-based learning is a great way to create and share knowledge and learn from one another (including the teacher). The students can take the project in a direction that interests them, therefore, keeping them engaged and motivated. Educators need to cater to the needs of the 21st century learners and implement activities that prevent students from daydreaming, feeling sleepy, showing signs of being tired, or not interested. Motivation is a huge factor that can effect the direction and outcome of activities, as well as success and achievement and therefore it’s promotion is important.
This week I chose to read Cheon & Reeve’s article about Amotivation. The authors define amotivation as “without motivation” or motivational apathy in which students harbor littler or no reason to invest the energy and effort that is necessary to learn or to accomplish something. They also describe amotivation as a multidimensional conceptualization which includes low ability, low effort, low value, and unappealing tasks. Overall, I found the article interesting and practical to my teaching practice. I believe many students are affected by amotivation either regularly across many subjects or just occasionally in a single subject. However, I also found the article hard to follow at times as it was very data and statistics heavy. I would have been interested to know more details about the autonomy-supportive instructional strategies that were utilized.
I found it especially interesting that the study was completed with only PE classes. I understand the author’s reasoning – the students lack motivation during PE as it is not an academic subject and therefore does not affect their university acceptance. However, in Vancouver and at the elementary school level, PE is viewed very differently. Many of my students who experience amotivation during academic subjects are the opposite during PE. They prefer the freedom of a PE class to the constraints of our regular classroom. I would be interested to read more about how an ASIP could be applied to academic subjects.
I believe motivation is strongly related to success and satisfaction in school. I also think there could be a large difference between girls and boys. The girls in my class seem to be much more motivated than the boys. I often wonder if that has to do with their maturity level and development or if there are inadvertent higher expectations for the girls, I’m not sure!
This week I read the Cheon and Reeve article on decreasing student antimotivation. The major objective of the article is to present the findings of an anti-motivation study conducted with sixteen secondary school PE teachers, and 598 students. The goal of the study is to see if student antimotivation could be decreased using a self-determination theory framework. The proposed classroom antidote to antimotivation is for teacher to offer a motivating style capable of involving, vitalizing and satisfying students’ psychological needs. Specifically, their needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The study found the self-determination theory framework to be successful in helping teachers decrease student antimotivation. I feel that the self-determination theory framework ties well with self-regulated learning, and social contexts of learning. In self-regulated learning Zimmerman pointed out that learning exists when students are able to self-regulate, but this also involves motivation, metacognition, and strategic action. He also points out that a teacher’s strategy could be to give students choice, which also leads to motivation. The self-determination theory framework is also supported by Archer and Bronfenfrenner through the social contexts of learning. They both believe that learning and development is impacted by the relationships of people and their environments. If students feel that their perspectives, thoughts, feelings, and suggestions into the flow of instruction are being heard, they will feel respected by their teachers, which will strengthen their relationship with the teacher, and increase motivation.
I liked the article, and I believe that these practices also lend themselves to building inquiry skills and resiliency in our students. When students are given choice and autonomy, they are much more likely to engage and take ownership over their learning. Through inquiry practices, students are encouraged to explore and make mistakes. Although inquiry practices face much criticism for glorifying failure, however, what’s important is the subsequent attempts in learning after the initial attempt in learning. Although the initial goal of the inquiry may not have been met, the students still learn so much, and through failure, they learn to self-regulate, persevere, and to engage in finding a solution by trying again, or trying a different method. At first, students without much previous autonomy in learning or inquiry experience struggle when they hit a wall, or they cannot find a solution to their problem. It is when teachers are highly autonomy supportive that their students can build the resiliency necessary to move on and try again. Many teacher are afraid when their students “fail”, and try at all costs to avoid failure in their instructional design. Although these teachers think they are being helpful, they are actually taking away learning opportunities from their students, and shielding them when the students should be allowed some autonomy and a chance to build resiliency. I am in complete agreement with the self-determination theory and the proposed classroom antidote to antimotivation as presented in the article. Our students are people just like us and need to feel heard and respected in order to be motivated to participate in learning. If we treat them any differently, although sometimes we think we’re helping or shielding, we are actually robbing our students of opportunities to learn and grow.
I enjoyed reading the article by Cheon and Reeve on a classroom based intervention to reduce amotivation. The authors define amotivation, autonomous motivation and controlled motivation to help further our understanding of what is amotivation. Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which I am in the midst of reading, has helped inform my understanding of what he believes motivates people. Daniel Pink talks about Motivation 1.0, 2.0, & 3.0. Motivation 1.0 “presumed that humans were biological creatures, struggling for survival” (p.225). Motivation 2.0 “presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishment in their environment” (p.225). Motivation 3.0 “presumes that humans also have a third drive – to learn, to create, and to better the world” (p.225). My understanding of what motivates people from the book helped me to better understand what Cheon and Reeve were trying to do in their study. They tried to achieve, with their Autonomy Supportive Intervention Program (ASIP), “to help teachers offer a classroom motivating style that could decrease students’ class specific amotivation” (p.99). Amotivation happens when students experience psychological need frustration when their autonomy and competence is prohibited or obstructed. To help explain why students experience amotivation Cheon and Reeve describe the Self-Determination Theory where students are “said to possess the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness” (p.100). These three psyschological needs have many parallels to Daniel Pinks’ third drive theory of the need to learn, create and better understand the world.
Daniel Pinks’ theory and the Self-Determination Theory fits in best, in my view, with the Constructivist Theory people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world. If a child has intrinsic or autonomous motivation they will be active participants in their learning to become expert learners. As teachers we should always be on the quest to better understand how to engage our students and how to increase student motivation. Why is that students run to school in Kindergarten but by the end of grade 12 cannot wait “to get out of there”? This is something I am very interested in learning about and have engaged in a process called the Teaching and Learning Working Group to examine what we are doing, what we believe, and what do we want (the we being my school district).
Something that I found very interesting when reading this article was the definition provided for engagement. Engagement was one of the key terms I defined in my literature review. Engagement is not an easy term to define; however, what became clear when I did my research was that engagement needs to be seen as multi-dimensional. To say a student is engaged without defining what we mean by how that engagement looks like is incomplete. In the literature review I discovered there was consensus that engagement should be described from a behavioural, cognitive and social/emotional dimension but this was the first time I had read about the agentic dimension. Agentic engagement is “how proactively students contribute into the flow of instruction they receive” (p. 100). Some may argue that this is a form of cognitive engagement but I appreciated the distinction made between how a student attempts to learn and how a student interacts in the classroom through their involvement. Having Cheon and Reeve explain how they defined engagement helped me further understand how they thought the ASIP program “not only produced a positive change in teachers’ motivating styles, it also produced motivational and engagement benefits for students” (p.109). I would have appreciated a further breakdown of the different ways teachers saw student engagement as increasing. Cheon and Reeve mention an increase in psychological need satisfaction as one example.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this article as it tied in so well with the book, Drive. I am endeavouring to better understand what motivates us and how I can then translate that knowledge into how teachers are engaging students in their classroom.
Pink, D. H. (2009). “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Motivation is a key component of most psychological theories, from behaviorist to social learning theory. As educators, our key goal is to motivate students to want to learn. We accomplish this by the way we teach and interact with the students, as well as the choice of material we deliver to the children.
The Cheon and Reeve (2015) article introduces us to the terms autonomous and controlled motivation as they correspond to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation respectively. We are also introduced to the term amotivation and then given examples of types of amotivation. Low ability, low effort, low value, and unappealing, are all reasons why students may not be motivated to do their best. This study was done using students in secondary PE classes in Korea. PE classes are a place where there is often a high degree of amotivation, and the cultural bias towards academics in many eastern cultures makes this effect even greater. Sixteen PE teachers were taught an autonomy supportive intervention program (ASIP). Teachers then taught the usual curriculum with more autonomous learning. “Students of the participating teachers rate their teachers as significantly more autonomy supportive and less controlling than do students of non-participating teachers.” (Cheon and Reeve, 2015, p. 100). Teachers also reported that ASIP helped them improve their classroom motivating style. The difficulty with the results of this study is that the sample was narrowly focused, “This sample potentially limits the study’s generalizability in terms of nation, grade level, and subject matter taught.” (Cheon and Reeve, 2015, P. 110), and the sample of teachers was small, “our utilization of only a subsample of the teacher population raises an issue of the generalizability of our findings.” (Cheon and Reeve, 2015, p. 109). Regardless of culture or sample size, amotivation is common in the secondary PE environment and motivation will always be a challenge such an environment.
“Culture’s Consequences on Student Motivation: Capturing Cross-Cultural Universality and Variability Through Personal Investment Theory” by Ronnel B. King & Dennis M. McInerney (2014), was an interesting look at how motivation techniques can differ greatly between cultures. There were some important points to consider from this article, given the varied cultural makeup of my students. The findings in this study made me consider which motivational techniques would be most successful, and to consider if there were any strategies that would allow me to motivate children, regardless of background. The amount of cultural influence that tween and teenage children feel as compared to their peer influence is also a consideration. King and McInerney introduce emic (culture specific) and etic (universal) aspects of motivation. They argued that there are three theoretical approaches to culture: absolutist (universal and culture free), relativist (local context – indigenous), and universalist (terms are universal but culture is an important aspect).
They also discussed the concept of personal investment theory, which depends on the interaction between three components:
1) sense of self (who am I?), academic self
2) perceived goals (what do I want to achieve?)
o Task/ mastery goals – increase performance relative to a standard
o Ego performance goals – do better than others
o Social solidarity goals – enhance sense of belonging and helping others
o Extrinsic reward goals – rewards or praise
3) facilitating conditions (what is the environment like?).
Going back to the examples earlier, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) posits that personal choice is the main facilitator of intrinsic motivation and engagement. However, it seems that this is not true for Asian students who become motivated when trusted others make the choice for them. In the second example, proponents of goal theory would argue that the pursuit of social approval goals is not healthy because it reflects an extrinsic motivational orientation (Nicholls, Patashnick, & Nolen, 1985).
This notion of the greater influence by family and a responsibility to uphold expectations is an important motivating factor if it is more powerful that individual drive for independence and perceived goals. These are things that I have never considered before, although I do recognize the effects now that they have been pointed out. I have also noticed the dichotomy of a westernized child doing schooling in western society yet having parents with non-western expectations on motivation strategies. This creates interesting and conflicting issues for these students.
Cheon and Reeve (2014) examine ways in which teachers can increase student motivation by increasing their psychological need satisfaction and decreasing their psychological need frustration. Amotivation is described as “a state of motivational apathy in which students harbor little or no reason (motive) to engage in classroom learning activities; it is a motivational deficit that is strongly associated with maladaptive functioning” (p.99). There are four important behavioral stimuli: intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation, and introjected regulation.
To increase motivation, teachers should provide their students with meaningful learning experiences, “welcome their thoughts, feelings, and suggestions into the flow of instruction, provide explanatory rationales for their requests, offer interesting and important learning activities and acknowledge students’ complaints and expression of negative affect as valid and understandable ways of feeling during the learning process” (p.101). The new BC curriculum is promoting student engagement and motivation within the core competencies and project based learning initiatives. I am constantly in awe working with teachers throughout British Columbia, because not only are they excited about the changing curriculum, they are really zoning in on how to make meaningful adaptations for their students. I like how this article focused on many specific components of motivation instead of blanket generalized statements.
Some schools that I have been working with are taking on the approach of the teacher as a “coach” that helps guide, motivate, encourage and empower children to make autonomous and meaningful learning decisions. There is so much happening with the new curriculum, that I’m often left wondering just how different this Master’s program would have been if we were still entangled in the old curriculum without any sense of future change. I think we are very fortunate to not only be learning about these theories, but we can actually see them already being tested
King and McInerney (2014) explore the importance of culture in influencing motivational processes. They propose using the Personal Investment (PI) theory to compare and contrast these influences in cross-cultural contexts, especially in relation to student motivation and learning. They criticize Western theories of achievement motivation as being biased and limited to explore motivational processes in non-Western cultures. King and McInerney (2014) developed the PI theory in order to move away from the assumption of Western, educated, industrialized, rich democratic (WEIRD) societies underlying mainstream theories of achievement motivation.
They argue most research that has been conducted about motivational processes have either used the absolutist approach (psychological processes are universal and culture-free) or the relativist approach (psychological processes are developed within local contexts) to culture. The PI theory uses both etic (culturally universal) and emic (culturally specific) features relating to student motivation and (subjective) culture. This theory may be used (cross-culturally) to examine how students choose to invest their efforts in particular tasks. It focuses on three (etic) components of meaning: sense of self (who am I?), perceived goals (what do I want to achieve?), and facilitating conditions (what is the environment like?) in understanding motivation within educational contexts. The PI theory is an open-system theory that examines how variables may be changed by their environment.
Methodologically, PI theorists have relied on Berry’s cross-cultural approach: begin with imposed etic, examine cultural appropriateness in emic stage, identify derived etics; explore emics within cultural settings to identify culture-specific psychological processes). King and McInerney (2014) provide a taxonomy of cross-cultural differences to understand motivational processes. This taxonomy includes differential meanings, differential factor structures, differential salience, and differential nomological nets.
They criticize mainstream motivational theories for: lacking attention to the larger cultural context (related to the macro-system in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory); having a narrow definition of motivational constructs (need an openness for emic constructs); lacking reflexivity in theory development (no refinement to reflect findings from cross-cultural research); heavily relying on top-down approaches (focus on imposed etics and not constructed emics); paying inadequate attention to issues of measurement equivalence (instruments need to apply to local cultures).
As an Indo-Canadian, I can personally relate to importance of recognizing the influence of culture on motivational processes, especially in relation to education. Although I was born and raised in North Vancouver, I was raised by immigrant parents. Their outlook on education was based on the values of the Indian culture in which they were raised in back in Punjab, India. My siblings and I all had to achieve high marks in all of our subjects in order to illustrate educational success because educational success would lead to a good career. Anything less than an “A” was deemed unacceptable in my family. The assumption was that good grades could be achieved through rote memory and daily practice with content. The focus of our education was on our grades and not on our learning needs or processes.
As an educator, I am mindful of the influence of culture on the motivational processes of my culturally and ethnically diverse students. As we have examined in this course, culture is only one of the many factors that influence the academic achievement of our learners. I need to understand the social-contextual factors that influence my students, and acknowledge that these factors may vary cross-culturally. Then, I need to design tasks that will be motivating and engaging for my students.
King and McInerney (2014) use the results of motivational studies from several countries to suggest that culturally neutral measures of motivation ought to be used. They cite studies that apply Western theories of motivation which find one outcome in the North American context and a different, sometimes opposite outcome in a different cultural context. For example, personal choice is considered highly motivating in self-determination theory, which is the case for Anglo-American children but not for Asian children who are more motivated when trusted authority figures and peers made choices for them. Studies investigating motivational frameworks such as approach-avoidance theory, goal theory, or self-efficacy theory also found different outcomes in different cultural contexts. This is not surprising from a social learning viewpoint, which posits that we learn through the filter of culture, as described by Vygotsky, and that we are influenced by what is in our immediate family as well as external forces, which was proposed by Bronfenbrenner. The idea that what is true in the North American context is universally applicable is an absolutist approach that suggests what is motivating for one is motivating for all with no consideration for cultural differences.
King and McInerney propose using Personal Investment (PI) theory as a way to analyse motivation cross-culturally and avoid the limitations of the motivational theories listed above. The framework of PI theory has two parts, the etic or universal constructs, and the emic or variable (in this case, culture-specific) constructs. Personal Investment refers to the time, energy and resources poured into a task, activity, or domain (i.e., school). The etic dimension of the framework is divided into three categories: facilitating conditions, perceived goals and sense of self. The content within these categories is the emic dimension or the culture-specific details.
King and McInerney cite many of their own studies along with those of other researchers to show how PI theory can be applied to identify differences in motivation between cultures. They offer many suggestions for educators, such as to understand factors in social contexts that influence students so interventions can be targeted appropriately; set goals that are motivating for students in their cultural context; be aware that students’ self-identity may result in different ways of contributing in class; and create school cultures that are universally motivating. They also recommend focusing on mastery goals, since these have been shown to have positive consequences over a broad range of cultures.
This was an interesting, very thorough article that reviewed the challenges of cross-cultural research into motivation. While this is particularly relevant in the lower mainland where school populations are culturally diverse, it also has implications in regions where populations are less diverse yet represent cultures that are not dominant such as indigenous communities. I am concerned about the potential risk of stereotyping or overgeneralizing the motivation of people groups; however, the research does make a valid case for cultural sensitivity when designing learning environments and experiences. It is also important to be aware that our students are “switching” daily from the culture at home and the culture at school. Sometimes what we may perceive as inattention or disengagement may be a conflict between home and school motivators. The impact of this will vary with the strength of the attachment to the home culture as well as how long a person has lived in and engaged with Canadian culture.
I really enjoyed reading Cheon and Reeve’s article “A Classroom Based Model to Reduce Amotivation” and the section in which they describe the importance of student autonomy and reduction of teacher control to increase motivation stuck with me as I read the remainder of the article and made me think about my own practice. The authors state that “students experience need satisfaction when teachers are highly autonomy supportive—when teachers eagerly embrace the students’ perspectives, welcome their thoughts and feelings and, suggestions into the flow of instruction, provide explanatory rationales for their requests, offer interesting and important learning activities, and acknowledge students’ complaints and expressions of negative affect as valid and understandable ways of feeling during the learning process.” (p. 100). This explanation stood out to me for two reasons.
First, when I was reading the remainder of this article, in which the authors’ were describing their own research in Korean middle and high school P.E. classes I felt like the researchers were actually implementing this type of autonomy towards their study subjects (the P.E. teachers) who were then expected to teach using ASIP in their own practices. The researchers wanted to study ASIP (autonomy-supported intervention practices) in P.E. classrooms in Korea and make a comparison of the experimental group with a control group. The authors describe providing workshops about ASIP for the experimental group teachers in which their feedback was welcome, there were opportunities for open discussions and teachers were encouraged to voice their concerns. As well, after the workshops were completed, the teachers then went back to their classrooms, but were not given direct instructions or “do-this” advice (p.103). The authors explain that instead they “introduced, modeled, and provided examples of the previously-validated autonomy-supportive instructional behaviours and then suggested that teachers adapt the five acts of instruction to their own instructional situation” (p.103). I am not sure if it was consciously or unconsciously done, but it seemed to me like the researchers were not only asking the teachers to teach using ASIP, but they themselves were using the ASIP approach as well to prepare the teachers. I wonder if this approach in the study affected the teacher’s motivation to continue participating in the study as they still felt a level of autonomy in their own teaching practices.
The second reason that the importance of student autonomy stood out to me is because it relates to my own inquiry in my classroom. I am looking at emotional engagement in the writing process. I recently completed a pre-questionnaire with my students about how they felt about three different types of writing. First they had to rate each type of writing and then part of this questionnaire was telling me why they felt a certain way. I told the students that they could be as honest as they wanted about it as it wouldn’t be shared with the class. At first they had a hard time believing that they could be totally honest and had many questions. One student asked me, “If I say I don’t like personal writing, do I have to say I like one of the other types?” Another student asked, “Is it ok to say I don’t like any type of writing?” and a third asked “Do my reasons all have to be different?” I kept telling them that it was completely ok to be honest and that they didn’t have to put down what they thought someone else (the teacher/a peer) wanted to hear. I think my students are not used to being asked what they want or what they think about something in school and they worry that if they voice a negative feeling or concern that it will be viewed as uncompliant or objectionable to the teacher. I had to reassure them that there was no specific right answer, but I was just wanting to know how they felt. Once they realized they could be honest they were able to give open answers they gave me a lot of insight into their feelings towards the writing process. As well, I think they felt heard and in the next feedback session I did with them after a digital writing activity they openly told me what they felt was positive and what did not work for them. This open-ended communication helps them feel connected to the material and their own learning and I hope is reducing their amotivation.
Scholar motivation is the topic of the hour! Personalized learning, choice, self-regulation coming from one side about making sure students are engaged. But on the other, I see an increased amount of non-motivation coming from students. I get an increased amount of parents requisition a meeting with me at the beginning of the year (within the first two weeks of school) to discuss that the school system isn’t made for their child because they are bored and they are expecting me to fix it. Most of the time I could only suggest so much as I barely knew the students and I felt ( and still feel today) like I only knew a few ways to support the students involved and their family. That’s why I am so glad that Cheon and Reeve began their article writing about the types of amotivation, amotivation being which students harbour little or no reason (motive) to invest the energy and effort that is necessary to learn or to accomplish something. The four types are low-ability, low-effort, low-value and unappealing task.
But where does motivation come from? Is it a conditioned behaviour that is acquired as a response to stimuli or is it more social/emotional and learned through self-regulation? Or a bit of both? Or neither? In the article, Ryan and Deci, 2001’s information about self-determination theory is quoted to be the student’s psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. According to the article, student’s amotivation occurs when teachers are too controlling, not aware of student’s perspectives and intrude in their beliefs. Chen and Reeve conducted a study in Korea in physical education class to see if they could reduce amotivation with the self-determination theory proposed by Ryan & Deci. The results have shown that teachers who used it obviously seen a greater level of motivation from their students. As teachers, we always try to make sure we reach our students. I often catch myself overthinking my lessons because I want to make sure they are engaged because I know how much it has the ability to affect the mood of the classroom when the students are not into it. But I feel sometimes even if we work really hard to come up with the best activity ever (Link to the article: “[to] offer interesting and important learning activities, and acknowledge students’ complaints and expressions of negative affect as valid and understandable ways of feeling during the learning process.” Chen & Reeve), there are some elements that are out of our control that have an affect on motivation that are not mentioned in the article. There is a brief mention of intrinsic motivation in the self-determination theory paragraph (Section 1.2). If I remember well, from my bEd, The intrinsic motivation affects cognition, the affect, biology and the conative, which of course the teacher can play a big part in, but there are social elements that can play into it such as relationship with peers, socio-economics and the necessity to belong. I am not questioning the conclusion of the article as I totally see how choice and less affects motivation but I would be curious to learn more about the following aspects:
How was the relationship between the students?
Did the students have a sense of belonging in their environment?
Did they have a trusting relationship with their teacher?
Were all their biological needs met (good food, enough sleep, etc)?
Also, what were the extrinsic motivators in place? Would this have worked without prior years of behavioural stimuli ( rewards, consequences, etc)?
This article really connected with me of the importance of choice and how important it is to get to know your students and how we can support them best. I would be curious to see a similar study done with a group of students from K-12 and see their journey in the school system (not alternative schools) with less control from the teachers.
I chose to comment on the Cheon & Reeve article on amotivation which they describe as “without motivation”, motivational apathy, and little or no reason to engage in classroom learning activities. The article looks at PE in Korea where it is a requirement but not as highly valued as English, Korean, Math and Science classes. They compare autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP) teachers with a control(ling) group of teachers. I liked the list of five behaviors including nurtures inner motivation resources, uses informational language, provides explanatory rationales, displays patience, and accepts & acknowledges. All of these sound like a nurturing style of teaching and current day norms of practice. I found I relate to these behaviors in my practice. As this article was found in Contemporary Educational Psychology, I found ASIP and motivation highly linked to one’s psyche; f you are told you can do something, you tend to try and believe that you can do it.
I regularly teach French 8 which is a requirement for our students so motivation is a factor I deal with every year. Student amotivation ranges similar to the article list from low ability, low effort, low value and unappealing tasks. The ASIP theory for teachers works in my classroom. Only once have I had a student completely pull away from my class in an emotional, physical, and psychological manner.
Initially when I read this I could relate to the Korean students amotivation required to take PE. I too disliked PE in high school but not because I did not value physical activity or have no ability. My reason was linked to self-image, similar to many high school girls. When I exercise my skin goes hot pink due to increased blood flow and it takes a few hours for my face to return to its normal color. It did not matter how much I liked the activity or felt comfortable with the teacher and students in gym, I put in as little effort as possible and was happy with a passing grade.
This year I have a student who refuses to present any public speaking assignments due to low self-image. This is not due to lack of motivation, the student will present to me but if it is in front of the class, she will leave. As a teacher we need to find ways to support our students and sometimes we need to be ok with alternatives. I will continue to encourage my students with autonomy-supportive choices.
This week I chose to read the article by King and McInerney titled Culture’s Consequences on Student Motivation: Capturing Cross-Cultural Universality and Variability Through Personal Investment Theory. The article presented the personal investment theory as an integrative theoretical framework that can be used to understand the role culture plays in student motivation and learning.
PI theory assumes that cultural influences are substantial. PI theory rests on the assumption that whether persons will invest themselves in particular activities or domains depends on the interaction among three facets of meaning: sense of self, perceived goals, and facilitating conditions.
In the article culture is defined as the set of values, beliefs, and traditions that influence the behaviours of a social group and as it pertains to a society’s characteristic way of perceiving and interacting with the social environment.
I enjoyed the analogy shared to illustrate the difference between etic and emic constructs. If we compare apples and oranges we can use etic elements like weight, size, thickness of skin, price, and the like. But obviously one does not learn much about the fruit with this kind of information. One needs to learn about the apple flavour and orange flavour, apple texture and orange texture and the like. These are emic qualities. So when we compare fruits we can do it with etic qualities, e.g. say that apples are more expensive than oranges today, but when we want to do a good job of describing the fruit we also need to use emic qualities. The analogy helped as I read the article to clarify the difference between etic and emic qualities as well as how they are important when looking at motivation across cultures.
It is interesting to look at motivation and culture from a classroom teacher’s perspective in Richmond. Richmond has a high Asian population. Last year and for the 12 previous years I was a French Immersion classroom teacher. I had Asian students in my classrooms but the majority were Canadian born. Their parents immigrated to Canada and had their children here. Even though the students were Canadian born you could see the Asian influences in their schooling passed down from their parents. They were very motivated by external rewards, especially letter grades or marks. I also observed that in many cases, not all, that there was a lot of pressure from parents for the students to succeed academically.
In the article it says “in the Chinese cultural context, academic achievement is seen as a social endeavour. By achieving in school, a student can bring “wealth, power, fame, and honour to the family” (Tao & Hong, 2014). I can see how this view can create a lot of pressure on a student to succeed. They don’t want to let their family down. When learning and academics are associated with power and fame it can’t help but create pressure.
While reading King and McInerney’s article I was reminded of an odd request that I received last year while I was a classroom teacher. I had a parent that was Chinese approach me about her daughter’s ELL level. Her daughter was a level 5 English Language Learner in grade 4. The parent was quite concerned about having her daughter’s “label” as an ELL learner removed from her file. She was worried about how this reflected on her daughter as a learner. She thought that having the ELL “label” reflected poorly on her daughter as a learner. She was worried about future applications to other schools as well. After reading the article I have a better understand of the Chinese cultural context concerning academic achievement and now the parent’s request does not seem so odd.
The article I chose to read this week was the Cheon and Reeve article outlining how teachers, when trained properly, can increase overall motivation in their students. The study was conducted in Secondary PE classes in Korea. I was particularly interested in this article because Cheon and Reeve decided to conduct their research in PE classes.
Cheon and Reeves state that amotivation is a state of motivational apathy in which students harbour little or no reason to engage in classroom learning activities (p. 99). Amotivation is a term I had not heard of before reading this article but it is something that I have faced in my career with my own students. The interesting thing is that I have not experienced amotivation during classes like PE but more often in the core subjects such as math and language arts.
Cheon and Reeve acknowledge that they intentionally conducted their research in Korea because of the cultural views that exist around education and the role of the teacher and student. Having taught in Japan for one year I know first hand the differences that exist in the beliefs around education and the role of the teacher. I personally experienced students falling asleep in my class and having the school expect that I taught from the textbook and there was only one answer, “the right one”. I know that Japan is not Korea but there are similarities in regards to the values that are placed on education. I am not surprised at all that Cheon and Reeve’s results showed that student motivation and engagement improved when the teachers taught in a more autonomous manner. One question that I continually asked myself was would the results be similar if Cheon and Reeves conducted their research in a more typically western school environment? Cheon and Reeves do identify that the results may have been different if the study was conducted in other subject areas and I wonder if they would have had the same results in a subject like math?
I think the research that Cheon and Reeves did clearly shows the role motivation has on student engagement. One theme that resonated with me was that when teachers create more autonomous and less threatening classrooms, students feel more inclined to take risks.
Cheon and Reeve’s article (2015) looks at a case study around decreasing amotivation: “a state of motivational apathy in which students harbor little or no reason (motive) to invest the energy that is necessary to learn or to accomplish something” (pg. 99) in students through an “autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP)” (pg. 99) for teachers. The case study is based on PE teachers in Korea, as this is a mandatory course, but not related to requirements for post-secondary entrance. I really like the way the article is written and laid out. It begins with a series of easy to understand definitions for key terminology, followed by the hypotheses of the study. The article then goes on to examine the methodology of the research including detailed information about participants, and procedures. As I read this I found myself thinking about our upcoming thesis – clearly a model of writing that resonates with me. I appreciate how all elements of the study are clearly mapped out.
I think the link between motivation and student engagement is an interesting one. Cheon and Reeve note that “motivation is a private student experience, one that is largely invisible to the teacher and is therefore something that needs to be inferred from other more visible student indicators, such as engagement” (pg. 100). This is something that I have struggled with in my own research. What are the indicators of motivation and engagement – is this something that we can accurately measure? or is it subjective? There are so many factors that can impact student motivation and engagement. How do we know that we have accurately identified the impact on students in these areas?
A major focus of the revised BC curriculum is personalized learning and inquiry study. Students are encouraged to follow a path of learning that is aligned with their interests and passions. Unlike the Korean students in the article, many classrooms in BC already have teachers that are more autonomy supportive (and learner centred). As the case study indicated, I definitely think there is a positive correlation between student choice, or more autonomous classrooms and student motivation.
As a primary teacher I relate to the importance of motivation because when working with young children because a variety to hooks, props and strategies are used to get and maintain a students attention and interest during learning activities. While some young children might be more motivated than older students to participate in classroom learning opportunities, there are still struggles and challenges that must be overcome. It is important to help students make this connection between their interests and background knowledge to what is being studied. I often encourage students to share how they connect to topic so are to increase interest and their motivation to participate and learn. Providing this opportunity to connect gives them more of a reason to engage in the specified learning activity. I read Chen and Reeve’s study which focussed on Korean high school students in Physical Education classes. While I don’t teach P.E. or students in that grade level I still could relate to the points that they made. The main objective of this article was to describe what is ammotivation and what teachers can do to decrease it. They defined student amotivation as “a state of motivational apathy in which students harbour little or no reason (motive) to invest the energy and effort that is necessary to learn or accomplish something” (Chen & Reeve, 2014). While some students are intrinsically motivated to learn, many of the students I teach see learning as secondary to socially interacting with friends, having fun or attending school because they have been told they have to.
Their goal was to help teachers develop a motivational style that would reduce students class specific amotivation. Young children have a fragile emotional state which I think is tied to their motivation and like in the article it is important to be aware of their psychological needs and not be too controlling. The grade 2/3 children I teach are motivated by feeling safe or feeling like they belong and understand why is going on during class lessons. They also like small rewards and praise. My students will remain engaged in a learning activity unless they are confused, not interested or not understanding what is being taught and then their behaviour can change in a negative way . Cheon and Reeve refer to the 4 aspects of engagement (behavioural, emotional, cognitive and agentic) which I can often observe in my classroom. I am learning with my current class that a lack of motivation with a variety of teachers is connected to their engagement and can lead my students to ignore, talk during a lesson, crawl under furniture, roll away on the carpet, play with something unrelated or tune out if they don’t feel actively involved in a lesson. I try to monitor and adjust the lesson length, requirements, style of lesson, and expectations so as to keep my students motivated. My colleagues and I try to keep extrinsic rewards like stickers and treats to a minimum and hope that by making the learning engaging, interesting and fun that we will keep the students motivated to learn. Its a fine line because sometimes small rewards are used to emphasis a certain behaviour or motivate students, but I don’t want it to be so large that students only demonstrate the desired behaviour when they receive the reward (operant conditioning). I think it is important to reflect on why students are dissatisfied with learning.
Recently I was teaching a math unit on number sense. For a special math lesson on Halloween day students were given the same questions along with a few challenging ones and asked to find the answers using a small bag of mini m&ms for counters. I told them they couldn’t eat any of the m&ms until all the questions were completed and shown to me. It was interesting to watch how motivated every student was to get the work completed. Was this an appropriate was to motivate my students? While it increased their function and they were keen to participate I would not make this kind of lesson a regular thing. I think learning autonomy supportive interventions as described by Chen and Reeve could help identify areas that could improve motivation. While we all want to create nurturing, positive, engaging, informative classrooms sometimes the stresses of teaching diverse student needs can lead to teaching practices that could be seen as controlling, pressuring, and not motivating to our students.
I am more aware of the psychological needs of my students and try to monitor student engagement. I must be aware that young children don’t hide their emotions very much. It is not uncommon to see young boys or girls refuse to participate, cry or have tears in their eyes when they don’t understand something, don’t feel included or feel pressure. Like in the study amotivation may be due to low ability, low effort, low value for the task or low ability with the assigned task. In the end I must admit that the easiest way to motor motivation is to look at student engagement, but I agree with Cheon and Reeve that “the inclusion of an effective achievement measure” (Chen & Reeve, 2014) would be a clearer indicator of if student motivation increased. This relates to my current research project in DLC3.