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Student Motivation & Active Learning
Rationale
Adapted from: ATHERTON J S (2008) Doceo; About the site [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.doceo.co.uk/
Broadly speaking, motivation is either intrinsic/expressive (doing something for its own sake) or extrinsic/ instrumental (doing something for some other reason). A useful, slightly more detailed, categorisation is:
Intrinsic |
Extrinsic |
|||
| Expressive | Achievement | Social | Instrumental | |
| Characteristics | Interest for its own sake: satisfaction derived directly from understanding/ skill | Desire
to succeed: “I'm not going to let this beat me”: mastery represents something important |
In order to gain social acceptance, either within the class/course etc. (“Pleasing teacher” or being one of the in-crowd, or outside | In order to gain a tangible reward or avoid negative consequences |
| Strengths | Enthusiasm, commitment | Commitment | Co-operativeness if class-oriented | Can develop into more significant commitment |
| Weaknesses | May get “carried away”: lose sight of wood for trees | Potentially
fickle
What the learning represents to the student may not be the same as what it represents to you |
May
concentrate on the appearance of achievement to the detriment
of “deep” learning
Social aspirations may change |
Achievement
rests on strict criteria of “relevance”
Aspirations may be met in other ways Anxiety may impede learning |
Maslow is the classic model here. Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970) was a humanistic psychologist who rejected the prevalent paradigm of exploring psychology either from experimentation with animals (behaviourism under Watson) or from the experience of mixed-up people, and concentrated on human potential for self-actualisation. He is chiefly known for his “hierarchy of needs” (but beware, because this is often mis-represented) See Maslow (1987)
The essence of the hierarchy is the notion of “pre-potency”, which means that you are not going to be motivated by any higher-level needs until your lower-level ones have been satisfied. Note however, that pre-potency only makes sense over a substantial time-scale. I ate a good breakfast this morning, but I shall be hungry again tonight: thus I may become concerned about Physiological needs again then. But if I “know where the next meal is coming from”, concern about meeting those needs will not be a great motivator.
Where the model is useful is in identifying individuals who get stuck on the lower levels, and who because of early insecurity or later trauma, cannot afford to be concerned with the higher levels: but this is chiefly relevant to mental health professionals rather than teachers. It also, of course, draws attention to how very basic problems—such as being too hot or too cold—can inhibit motivation to learn at higher levels, but we did not really need Maslow to tell us that.
The major difficulty with Maslow is that although his hierarchy makes sense in general terms — if I am preoccupied with physical needs, I am not usually going to be interested in self-esteem needs, for example — there are equally many occasions on which it does not hold good. It is excessively individualistic, and does not allow for altruism. And although most of Motivation and Personality is about defining “self-actualisation”, he never really succeeds in doing it. It is one of those models in which there is actually less to it than meets the eye
A similar point is made in Herzberg's “motivational hygiene” theory, according to which demotivators (or "hygiene factors") have to be reduced as well as motivators (or incentives) increased, to develop positive motivation (Herzberg 1966):
See also
Note that the factors shown are for illustration only: the balance may be very different for any particular person and/or situation. In particular, Herzberg argued that pay is at best a hygiene factor; poor pay reduces motivation, but good pay does not of itself create enthusiasm... It's a fine point and may depend on the pay structure, but we are concerned with learning rather than job performance, so I'll let the diagram stand. Or am I just not motivated enough to change it? Discuss!
Today's Videos
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Teaching and Learning Resources
Learning Outcomes
After completing this module students should be able to
1. Identify and describe four overall strategies, each with two substrategies, that have been shown to enable people to be successful achievers.
2. Describe how these strategies and substrategies have and can be used to overcome problems and challenges encountered in study.
3. Demonstrate the use of these strategies and substrategies in proposing solutions to problems and challenges encountered in college.
Approaches to Study
- Motivation in Learning and Teaching
- Active Learning - A very brief look
- Vocational students motivation and perceived success in workplace
Deep and Surface are two approaches to study, derived from original empirical research by Marton and Säljö (1976) and since elaborated by Ramsden (1992), Biggs (1987, 1993) and Entwistle (1981), among others.
It is important to clarify what they are not.
1. Although learners may be classified as “deep” or “surface”, they are not attributes of individuals: one person may use both approaches at different times, although she or he may have a preference for one or the other.
2. They correlate fairly closely with motivation: “deep” with intrinsic motivation and “surface” with extrinsic, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Either approach can be adopted by a person with either motivation.
There is a third form, known as the “Achieving” or strategic approach, which can be summarised as a very well-organised form of Surface approach, and in which the motivation is to get good marks. The exercise of learning is construed as a game, so that acquisition of technique improves performance. It works as well as the analogy: insofar as learning is not a game, it breaks down.
The features of Deep and Surface approaches can be summarised thus:
| Deep | Surface |
| Focus is on “what is signified” | Focus is on the “signs” (or on the learning as a signifier of something else) |
| Relates previous knowledge to new knowledge | Focus on unrelated parts of the task |
| Relates knowledge from different courses | Information for assessment is simply memorised |
| Relates theoretical ideas to everyday experience | Facts and concepts are associated unreflectively |
| Relates and distinguishes evidence and argument | Principles are not distinguished from examples |
| Organises and structures content into coherent whole | Task is treated as an external imposition |
| Emphasis is internal, from within the student | Emphasis is external, from demands of assessment |
(based on Ramsden, 1988)
The Surface learner is trying to “suss out” what the teacher wants and to provide it, and is likely to be motivated primarily by fear of failure. One interesting study has suggested that efforts by teachers to convey that what they want is Deep learning only succeeds in getting Surface learners to engage in ever more complex contextualising exercises, trying to reproduce the features of the Deep approach, from a Surface basis. (Ramsden, Beswick and Bowden, 1986)
Surface learning tends to be experienced as an uphill struggle, characterised by fighting against boredom and depressive feelings. Deep learning is experienced as exciting and a gratifying challenge.
There is some evidence that assessment methods can “reach back” into courses in such a way as to make Surface approaches more likely: it has not so far been demonstrated that appropriate assessment methods can of themselves encourage Deep learning.
The Deep and Surface distinction is a very popular one, much researched, using two main instruments; the Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, 1987) and Entwistle's Approaches to Study Inventory. Although the original ideas were derived from the “phenomenographic” approach of open-ended measures factor-analysed to yield the basic Deep and Surface dimensions, later work has concentrated on refining scales to produce the dimensions (thus explicating the “symptoms” of each approach), and thereby regarded the approaches themselves as given.
One characteristic of the Surface approach is its tendency to “miss the point” of the learning. My reading of the evidence is that this may be a generalisation which is not completely supported by the evidence, particularly bearing in mind the non-subject-specific questionnaire instruments used which may not be able to get at this feature very easily.
What does not appear to have been researched is the problem of the structure of the knowledge being taught. While it is clear that either approach can be applied to practically anything, some subjects call forth a Surface approach more readily than others — law and medicine are perhaps examples*. While there is a correlation between Deep approaches and better results in summative assessments, nothing seems to have been done on outcomes in professional practice beyond the institution.
Two other points:
1. Many current university students have been "coached" by their teachers to get the grades they need for admission: they have been trained to be surface learners, and their experience is that it "works". Why should they take the risk of working in a different way?
2. Surface learning seems to be more likely when learning is isolated from practice. Practice has its own problems, in terms of "survival" practice, but surface learning is perhaps a function of the isolation of academic life from the real world where knowledge and ignorance have real consequences, rather than merely affecting assessment grades.
Learning Motivation
Tutorials
Readings
A fairly standard consensual definition is "a relatively permanent change in behaviour (sic.; it's American of course) that results from practise." (Atkinson et al 1993). This is of course arguable, particularly the "practice" criterion. Others would accept changes in "capability" or even simple "knowledge" or "understanding", even if it is not manifest in behaviour. It is however an important criterion that "learned" behaviour is not pre-programmed or wholly instinctive (not a word used much nowadays), even if an instinctual drive underpins it. Behaviour can also change as a result of maturation—simple growing-up—without being totally learned. Think of the changing attitude of children and adolescents to opposite-sex peers. Whatever the case, there has to be interaction with the environment.
We are indeed becoming more confused: evidence from genetics, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience is arguing ever more strongly for predispositions for our behaviour. Locke’s tabula rasa is getting dirtier by the minute: this is one of those areas for which Mark Twain’s (attributed) comment might have been coined:
“Many researchers have already cast much darkness upon this subject, and it is probable that if they continue, that we shall soon know nothing at all about it”
Even if psychologists ever agree about what learning is, in practice educationalists won't, because education introduces prescriptive notions about specifying what ought to be learnt, and there is considerable dispute about whether this ought only to be what the teacher wants the learner to learn (implicit in behavioural models), or what the learner wants to learn (as in humanistic models).
“Learning” means different things to different people. Säljö (1979) classified the conceptions held by respondents in his interview-based study into five categories:
1.
Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge. Learning is
acquiring information or “knowing a lot”
2. Learning as memorising. Learning is storing information that
can be reproduced.
3. Learning as acquiring facts, skills and methods that can be
retained and used as necessary.
4. Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning. Learning involves
relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the
real world.
5. Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different
way. Learning involves comprehending the world by re-interpreting
knowledge.
There is a clear qualitative shift between conceptions 3 and 4. It has been argued that 1, 2 and 3 are views which underpin surface learning strategies, while 4 and 5 relate to deep learning.
See also
What counts as "learning" for educational purposes depends on cultural, social, economic and political factors, because implicit in education as a deliberate enterprise is the notion of prescription. Education is supposed to be a "Good Thing". So having a phobia about worms may be learned behaviour, but it does not count as Education. Nor does acquiring greater skill in breaking into cars as a result of learning from peers in prison.
What counts as "learning" for educational purposes depends on cultural, social, economic and political factors, because implicit in education as a deliberate enterprise is the notion of prescription. Education is supposed to be a "Good Thing". So having a phobia about worms may be learned behaviour, but it does not count as Education. Nor does acquiring greater skill in breaking into cars as a result of learning from peers in prison.
The process starts with what the society considers to be desirable knowledge, and indeed what counts as knowledge at all: consider the ambivalence about astrology, or complementary medicine. The social structure is also reflected in the attitude to the knowledge — is it unquestioned truth, to be learned and reproduced but not modified, or is it provisional knowledge on which critical faculties can be trained? (As one sociologist said, "Newton stood on the shoulders of those who went before: sociologists stand on their heads!") This leads into culturally endorsed models of the learning process, and variable acceptance of the initiative of the learner — as seen in constructivism or andragogy.
The subject matter, framed by culture, imposes its own discipline: it may be linear (like maths, in which you have to learn the concept of number, counting, addition, substraction, multiplication and division, in that order, before you can go on to anything else) or accessible at any point. It may be governed by a clear philosophical structure (like science), or by its history (like law), or none of these. It may be convergent or divergent. See inter al. Kolb on this.
The society produces an educational system in its image, whether it makes use of informal — “situated” learning — or is seduced (as Illich would see it) by the Western model of dedicated educational institutions, whose inadequacies have been so clearly discussed in Becker’s wonderful essay.
Then
that educational system imposes its own constraints on what can
be taught and learned and what counts as learning, through its
assessment and accreditation procedures. This in turn is filtered
and interpreted by the teacher. The micro-culture of the learner's
group or class may encourage, inhibit or distort various kinds
of learning. Then there is the learner as a person, making continuous
"cost-benefit decisions" (Claxton,
1996) about what it is worth learning, and endowed with certain
aptitudes and preferences: until finally we reach the "learning
"of that person.
What is Taught and what is Learned
It is a simple point that what is taught is not the same as what the students learn, but it does have a number of implications.
In the figure above, it is clear that some of what we teach is wasted effort: but the diagram is a representation of only one learner’s learning. It may be that within a class as a whole, everything we teach is learned, by someone. The shape representing the teaching is smaller than that for learning, because students are also learning from other sources, including colleagues and the sheer experience of being in the educational system, as well as more conventional other resources such as books.
It is an open question in any given case as to whether what they learn apart from what they are taught is a "good" thing or not. It includes the “hidden curriculum”, which is a phrase used by Snyder (1971) to describe what students learn by default in educational settings. His original observations at MIT in the late 'fifties were about how students with an over-loaded curriculum acquired survival tactics to get through their courses, such as mugging up only the parts which were likely to come up in the exams, and thus losing the point of much of the teaching. This selective learning is one of the characteristics of what is now called "surface learning", although that tends to be seen as an attribute of the learner — Snyder saw it as a problem of the institution.
From a sociological (Marxist) rather than primarily educational perspective, Bowles and Gintis (1976) suggested that all US schooling has a hidden curriculum dictated by the demands of a capitalist economy. More recently, critical theorists have sought to expose the hidden assumptions behind curricula (see, for example, Collins (1991) — see also Cultural Considerations). Some of the work seems marginal and academically political, but there is no denying that teachers' strategies, such as labelling, can have a profound effect on a student's experience. Claxton (1996) has convincingly argued that adult learning is profoundly influenced by “implicit theories of learning” acquired at school, and that teachers tend to reproduce their implicit models in the ways in which they themselves go on to teach.
Reasons why people learn the "wrong" things, and why they stick:
Instructional Design Models
Tutorials
Readings
Behaviourism, from Martin Ryder, University of Colorado at Denver, School of Education
- Classics in Behaviourism (Christopher Green)
- Behaviourism (Wikipedia)
- Behaviourism (Don Clark)
- Behaviourism (Gary DeMar)
- Behaviourism (On Purpose Associates)
- Ivan Pavlov (Wikipedia)
- Ivan Pavlov (1924) Lectures on the Work of the Cerebral Hemisphere (courtesy Andy Blunden)
ADDIE: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation
- ADDIE Model (Robert Colston)
- ADDIE Based Five-Step Method Towards Instructional Design (Michael J. Malachowski)
- Continuous Process Improvement (Don Clark)
see ISD
A.S.S.U.R.E. (Heinich, Molenda, Russel, and Smaldino)
- ASSURE Model (Glenn Shepherd)
- Example (Nellie Deutsch)
Designing Motivational Learning Systems in Distance Education
Tutorials
Readings
- The ARCS Model (Robert Colston)
- The ARCS Model (Kevin Kruse)
Two key questions:
- What will you do to make the instruction valuable and stimulating for your students?
- How will you help your students to succeed and feel they were responsible for their success?
Students have a responsibility for motivating themselves
- Am I paying attention?
- Am I actively engaged with the instructor?
- Am I trying to formulate questions about how I can use the information?
- Am I actively trying to connect my background to the information?
- Am I trying to learn from others in the class?
- Have I set a learning goal?
ARCS model can make learning a more positive experience.
Attention: Perceptual attention-getters, as the instruction begins and continuing throughout, such as colours, style, sound, humour, novelty, interaction and involvement are essential.
Relevance: Use meaningful examples to create contextual links between the learner and the content you are teaching. Utilize the results of your needs assessment to get an understanding of your learners and their reason for seeking or requiring your instruction.
Confidence: Success as the learner moves through your instruction will keep your learner engaged and will increase his/her positive response to the experience. Design the instruction with small steps, self-pacing if possible, and immediate feedback to provide confidence-building experiences.
Satisfaction: Appropriate acknowledgment of instructional content and developing the desire to continue the pursuit of similar goals.
Attention |
Relevance |
Confidence |
Satisfaction |
|
|
|
|
See also
Resources
