Motivation

All you need to know about motivation – Alistair Smith

Its all about attention! Attention is directed by curiosity. Curiosity is engaged by novelty but novelty is a U-shaped curve. There are only so many times an experience remains new. However, novelty, curiosity and attention are all serviced by a range of emotional systems which all play their part in motivation.

Motivation is emotion in motion. Sufficiently motivated, an individual will experience physiological changes. The internal reward system is activated. Different circuitry – the amygdala, the nucleus accumbens, the basal ganglia, the brainstem and the hippocampus – become involved. Research shows that with proper motivation, learning is quicker. More areas of the cortex become involved.

We can link to external reward systems but engaging the internal reward systems is better. How do we do this? By persuading the participant of the benefits. Because we are complex creatures this is not a simple selling job. Some of us are motivated towards success, others away from failure. For some external material or peer reward is best – short term – whilst for others there is value and pleasure in the experience itself: flow.

Motivation theory summarised
The motivation of a child differs in some ways from that of an adult. A child's motivation can be viewed as maturing through four phases. The child moves from self-interest to pleasure to competition to immersion, whilst at the same time retaining vestigial aspects of each stage.

• self-interest and security then,
• desire to please another and/or
• need to avoid displeasure of another then,
• drive to compete with peers and/or
• drive to compete with self then,
• immersion through pleasure

Motivational theory takes the above dimensions and packages them into sophisticated models. Pintrich and Schunk identified six.

Expectancy and value
Expectancy represents the key idea that individuals will not choose to do a task or continue to do a task when they expect to fail. The value component refers to the different beliefs an individual may have about the worth of engaging with the task.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Structure tasks to be challenging but achievable
b) Foster the believe that ability is changeable, controllable and part of development
c) Decrease the amount of relative student ability information published
d) Discuss the utility value of the work. Sell the benefits and encourage buy-in to the benefits
e) Model motivational and process engagement as well as content engagement and provide accurate educative feedback
f) Provide choice and control over choice

Attribution
Attribution suggests that individuals are driven by a need to understand and make sense of themselves and the world around them. It also suggests that individuals attempt to understand what causes their behaviours and those of others around them. They do so, it is suggested, in categories or dimensions. They are the locus dimension, the stability dimension and the controllability dimension.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Be professionally curious about determinants of behaviour
b) Avoid attributional bias and invest in positive beliefs about student capability and about learning
c) Accurate feedback is ultimately better than 'esteeming feedback'
d) Help individuals re-frame maladaptive attributional patterns

Social cognition
Social cognitive theory suggests that individuals are influenced by what the see around them. They then act based on their thoughts, goals, beliefs and values which are shaped by their observations. This process is called modelling. By observing models, people learn skills and strategies that they may not demonstrate at the time of learning, but rather later when they are motivated to do so and believe it would be worthwhile. Self-efficacy and goal setting are important features of the social cognition model.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Be aware of inhibition and disinhibition modelling. Inhibition modelling: 'because you have not finished you work you have to stay in', everyone also who has not finishes notices and also stay in without being asked to. Disinhibition modelling: 'let me tell you now, late work will receive a lower grade'. Several students hand work in late and do not receive a lower grade. Soon many others are handing work in late.
b) Response modelling. Historical artefacts of rural life are laid out at the back of the room. Nothing is said about them but as students arrive they go there and look rather than sit at desks.
c) Proximity modelling. Use role models whose abilities are only just ahead or slightly beyond the ability of the student.
d) Coping modelling. Use role models who demonstrate coping strategies
e) Multiple modelling. Demonstrate and reinforce different methods of approaching learning challenges.

Goal orientation
Goal orientation theory focuses on needs and goals. Needs can be understood through the context of homeostasis. Unfulfilled needs generate a tension which then leads to some approach or avoidance behaviour to release the tension and satisfy the need. Goals can be looked at in terms of goal content - what is the desired outcome - and goal processes - what strategies do we use to secure the goal. Multiple goals, when not in conflict, can create a synergy.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Positive personal goals have more impact long term than negative or avoidance goals.
b) Utilise direct evidence. Focus on a direct problem of personal agency rather than a generalised one related to self -esteem. Provide opportunities for esteeming the learner through task achievement rather than rehearsing platitudes.
c) Just do it! Many individuals' negative self-concept and limiting beliefs are so embedded they inhibit any attempt to engage with a task. Success breeds success
d) Focus goals on individual improvement, learning, progress and mastery
e) Use heterogeneous co-operative groups to foster peer interaction; use individual work to convey progress.
f) Time line progress towards goals and teach students how to timeline their goals

Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation theory refers to motivation to engage with an activity for its own sake. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is motivation to engage with an activity for some sort of betterment. Each is a separate continuum and not necessarily linked. Each is time and context dependent.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Intrinsic motivation can be enhanced by providing students with learning which is challenging, which engages curiosity, where they have a degree of control and where there is a game-like or fantasy dimension
b) Use rewards to convey information and not to control behaviour. When students perceive rewards as a means of controlling behaviour, they are less self-determining and 'lapse' when the reward is removed
c) Encourage students to evaluate their goals and to share their evaluations

Engagement and emotion
Engagement and emotion theories include those to do with emergent motivation and what is called 'flow', constraints on learning performance such as test anxiety and concepts of self-esteem.

Lead Learner Strategies

a) Create a positive emotional climate in the classroom
b) Rehearse positive patterns of test behaviour
c) Teach and practice coping techniques in advance of tests
d) Use spaced testing
e) De-brief all tests for cognition and emotion components. How did you do? How did you feel? Embed opportunities for cognitive and emotional reflection.

Explaining human motivation is a complex and messy business. The booklist below might help you begin to find further ways of making sense of it all.

(Excerpted from The Best on Motivation and Learning, ed Simon Percival, Alite Ltd)

Copyright Alistair Smith 2002

The first 11 - great recent 'reads' on motivation and learning

1. Bandura, A. (1997) Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control, New York, Freeman
2. Brophy, J. (1998) Motivating Students to Learn, New York: McGraw Hill
3. Covington, M.V. (1998) The will to learn: A guide to motivating young people, New York: Cambridge University Press
4. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow, New York: Harper and Row
5. Dweck, C.S. (1999) Self theories: Their role in motivation, personality and development, Philadelphia, Taylor and Francis
6. Gilbert, Ian (2002) Essential Motivation, London, Routledge
7. Goleman, D. (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury
8. Harter, S. (1999) The construction of the self: A developmental perspective, New York, Guildford Press
9. Morrell, Capparell and Shackleton (2001) Shackleton's Way: Leadership lessons from the great Antarctic explorer, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
10. Pintrich, P and Schunk, D. (2002) Motivation in Education: Theory, Research and Applications, New Jersey, Merrill Prentice Hall
11. Smith, A. (2002) The Brain's Behind It, Stafford: Network Educational Press