Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Motivation to Learn

In one of my books that I am reading, called Motivation to Learn, they discuss psychological theories on motivation. Reinforcement theorists believe that behavior is caused by events external to the person and refer to the law of effect, which states that behavior is determined by its consequences. The chapter goes on to discuss how in many classrooms positive reinforcement strategies are used and can be very effective in influencing students behavior and can be used to motivate students when they may not have interest in doing something. However, it also mentions the negative effects it can cause. Students learn at different paces, if rewards are based on the teachers observation, a kid could be pretending to work hard and reminiscing about the home run he hit the night before. Also, if they get rewards for reading a book, they might pick easy reads, and they may become negative and demanding.

If the positive reinforcement doesn't work, it says that many people turn to punishment. However, with some students, it says the humiliation of having a failing grade will turn them around to want to bring up the grade, where for others it just causes anxiety and alienation, which hinder their learning.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Interviews

Tuesday and this morning, I was at the high school and the middle school filming interviews for my documentary. I interviewed both of my cooperating teachers and the principal of Aldrich Middle School. All of them see a struggle with student motivation and students taking learning seriously. When I talked to the students, I found that 1) the accelerated and synectics students were motivated because they were being supported at home, and 2) the other students said they wanted to do well, but weren't doing that great. Now that I have my interviews, I am going to continue my reading with two books from the library on motivation and many articles that Bill gave me to read that deal with psychology and motivation.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

First Readings and Plans

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.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Student Motivation

On Friday, I asked a few of my students if they were motivated to do well in school and what motivated them to do well. One girl thought about it for a while, and then said, "Yes, because if I don't have good grades then I can't date my boyfriend." "That's what my mom said." She doesn't seem to care that her future will depend on her education, but she wants to date her boyfriend. I then asked that girl if her parents were involved in her schooling or asked how school was and if she had any homework, and she said no. Another girl told me that her mom says that if she doesn't do well in school its her own fault, she has no control over it. One boy that I talked to said, that he gets good grades because he knows if he didn't, he would be in so much trouble with is parents. A few other girls overheard us talking and they said they come to school to look at the boys.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Senior Thesis

Well, I think I finally figured this out, and hopeful this will work. I am finishing up my last few weeks of student teaching and I have been thinking about my thesis and what would be something that I have learned or want to learn more about from my student teaching. Most of the problems that I have had during my student teaching with both the high school and the middle school students is lack of motivation. There were 60/100 students failing with under 30% because they refused to do anything in the high school. I want to do my thesis on how to motivate students and why it seems like the desire to learn seems to lesson each year (as my teachers were telling me).