Essay
Today I learned about the factors that affect a student's motivation to learn. Emotions play a huge role in how a student performs in class. They can bring emotional baggage, or outside emotions and situations, into the classroom and this in turn can affect their learning. For example, if a student's parent recently died, their grief could affect their motivation to learn since they are preoccupied with emotions and not focused on the task at hand. Emotion also has a role in what students remember; if a topic is emotional, such as shocking or exciting, students will connect to it more and find it more interesting. This is called hot cognition. Students are motivated to learn when they are interested in the subject matter and can see how it is relevant to their lives. As an English teacher, I hope to encourage my students to be interested in literature, but reading dry, ancient texts will not encourage student interests. Therefore, I will try to find texts that relate to their lives or have young people as the protagonists.
The two types of motivation are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside a student; they want to learn and succeed. It is learning for the love of learning. Extrinsic motivation is when a student is driven by external factors, such as rewards or punishments. One example of an extrinsic motivation would be grades (or rewarding yourself with chocolate!) Big rewards like money bonuses do not always encourage people to do their best, most creative work, as we learned in the TED video by Daniel Pink. You have to somehow motivate students to want to do well, through a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I will have to learn what motivates my students by observing them in action - maybe a reward like free time will work. It is not until I actually enter the classroom that I will be able to determine what works. Thanks for reading!
Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteRegarding your T2P statement, when you say "these factors affect..." how? And what specifically are the "factors"? One way to improve the quality of your hypothesis would be to make it more concrete. How about incorporating a piece of evidence or a specific pedagogical practice you would use to build the bridge between teacher and learner beliefs?
In your second section, you do a great job providing more specificity (along with demonstrating your content knowledge). This is what is missing from your initial T2P. Make a little adjustment and you will be right on track. Keep pressing.