This week I started researching on motivation. I found some scholarly journals and two books so far. One of the scholarly journals talks about introducing goal setting to your students. They say self esteem directs and motivates behavior, so if you work to give them high self esteem they should do their work because they believe in themselves. They give a six step process for setting goals with your students and say that teaching goal setting is a clearly defined method for redirecting the teaching patterns to guide students toward a more constructive path in life. Another book I began reading was called Motivation and Teaching. In this beginning chapter it talked about a myth of motivation. When students will not involve themselves in activities or do assigned tasks, they are unmotivated. This author, Wlodkowski says, that the students are usually motivated, just not to learn. They have restless behavior and want to talk to their friends about other things. So, how do we get that to change?
On Friday and Tuesday I am going to head to the middle school and the high school to do a few interviews to start my documentary. I am going to interview both of my cooperating teachers and some of the students and see if they think they are motivated to do well in school.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Good start, Stacy. I recommend that you look up some research articles on motivation that involve interviewing to get a sense of what kinds of quesitons might be most worthwhile. I also suggest that you consult a book on doing interviews and constructing interview questions. That will be very useful. Are you planning on doing a documentary or writing an article?
This is a great topic; a topic that I think all future teachers should do some research on. I commend you for taking on such a big task.
I know for a fact that children have tons of motivation when they really want something. And I think you're right about the BIG question being: How do we motivate them to do well in school, How do we make them want to learn?. The thing that I find perplexing is that most children, if you ask them, do want to learn about the world around them, but they do poorly in school. I think this is because a lot of students don't find school to be beneficial. Better connecting their education in school with their actual lives outside of school might motivate them to want to learn??
I think the whole issue of self-esteem has alot to do with student motivation. By high school it seems like alot of kids who arn't motivated don't think school is something they can succeed at and they find various ways of expressing this, none of which are very positive.
I was am also interested in whether you think things like extracurriculars help student motivation. Developing interests outside of academics that they do at school and make school a positive place for them. To be honest my whole reason for asking about this is I watched to documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, about ballroom dance programs in New York Public schools. It is kind of interesting to see how success in that impacts some of the kids. Anyways, if you are doing a documentary it would definitely be good to watch to get some ideas.
Post a Comment