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Running head: CORE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS PAPER

Core Psychological Concepts Paper

Elizabeth L. Diffey

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Elizabeth Diffey
CPC Paper Draft
November 2, 2015
It is not uncommon for teachers to have difficulties motivating their students to actively
participate in their own learning. Thus, the problem I will address concerns a ninth grade
government and politics classroom comprised of students who are more concerned about their
grades than they are about learning the class material. The students lack a personal commitment
to learning and rarely participate in large group and small group activities. Despite efforts to
persuade the students to be active participants, they are unmotivated and uncomfortable with
participating in group activities with each other. The students do not believe they can handle
group work.
Upon considering this particular problem, I identified three psychological concepts that I
believe relate to this issue. The first concepts I will apply to this problem are intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is defined as the motivation involved in a learning
activity for its own sake (Moreno, 2010, p. 329). In this scenario, students who are intrinsically
motivated would have a desire to solve a problem because they are curious about the process
behind solving the problem and the answer to the problem itself. Conversely, extrinsic
motivation is the motivation to be involved in a learning activity as a means to an end
(Moreno, 2010, p. 329). Students who are extrinsically motivated would tend to solve a problem
in order to get a good grade or receive praise from their teacher. Intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation are related to the overarching issue due to the fact that the students lack a personal
commitment to learning and are not motivated to participate in activities that will aid in their
learning.

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The next concept I will apply to this problem is expectancy value theory, which is
describes the idea that students become motivated to learn by the product of two main forces,
their expectation of reaching the learning goal and the value of the learning goal (Moreno,
2010, p.341). According to this theory, if the student does not expect to reach a learning goal or
there is no perceived value in the learning goal, the student will become unmotivated to learn.
This concept relates directly to the larger issue at hand in that it addresses the fact that classroom
activities must be important, have utility, have low costs, and be of intrinsic interest to students.
Utility refers to an aspect of an activity that would be considered useful for accomplishing
student goals. For this group activities, student will be more inclined to participate if the costs are
low, meaning it doesnt require much time, energy, or emotional investment. I chose this concept
because it demonstrates the idea that students are more likely to find value in learning when they
are interested in the topic or activity being discussed. As the students in this scenario are
unmotivated and uncomfortable with participating in group activities, this theory is relevant in
that it addresses methods to combat these phenomena.
The third concept I will apply to this problem is problem-solving, which is the type of
thinking people apply to achieve a desired end state that is different from an initial state
(Moreno, 2010, p.260). Problem-solving is a complex and multi-tiered cognitive process, but
when I was examining the overarching problem, John Deweys five step problem solving process
seemed relevant. Deweys model includes recognizing the existence of the problem, identifying
the nature of the problem, developing hypotheses to solve the problem, testing the different
hypotheses, and selecting the most appropriate alternative among hypotheses. Under certain
circumstances, students become unmotivated and disengaged in classroom activities because
they havent been explicitly taught how to solve problems. It is difficult to expect students to be

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engaged and motivated to learn and problem solve in groups when they might not have all the
tools they need to be successful. Teaching and learning this specific problem solving process
may help motivate and engage students in this particular classroom.
Given that the students are having difficulty engaging and participating in classroom
activities, as a teacher it would be my job to intervene and find a way for students to value
learning and motivate them to effectively work as a group. The first step of my intervention
process would be to evaluate the procedures and methods used during previous group activities.
In particular, I would be looking for what did and did not go well and what students appeared to
enjoy or not enjoy doing. One way I could do this would be directly asking students or looking
back at assessments to see what classroom activities translated into understanding. One method I
would use to collect data on this would be to have students fill out comment cards explaining
what they liked and didnt like about past group work.
According to research on expectancy value theory, it could be possible that these students
may be unmotivated to learn due to beliefs about their perceived ability in handling group work.
Specifically, Winfield found that previous performance affected subsequent ability beliefs
(Wigfield 2000). In this scenario, students may have struggled with group work previously in
their education or in this class and thus, do not believe they are able to be successful. That is,
ability beliefs also affect subsequent performance. According to expectancy value theory,
students will not be motivated to learn if they do not expect to reach the learning goal. By
challenging the students beliefs about their ability to effectively participate in group work, their
expectancies of group work would change, and as a result students may be more motivated to
participate in the learning process.

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In order for students to effectively problem solve, I would directly teach them the steps to
Deweys problem-solving model. Teaching these strategies directly will allow student to be more
engaged and motivated because they will have all the tools they need to be successful. As far as
group work goes, I would also reflect on whether group activities included the five essential
elements of cooperative learning, which are positive interdependence, individual accountability,
face to face interaction, social skills, and group processing (Moreno 2010). In this particular
scenario, positive interdependence would be established by creating mutual goals, rewards, and
complementary roles assigned by myself to ensure all members of the group are successful. I
would also implement individual assessments so that each student is held accountable for their
own performance, which will likely make them more inclined to participate. I would also
organize the groups in a way that would make it more likely for the students to be more involved
and supportive of each other. This would be achieved be creating small, mixed-ability,
heterogenous groups. Thus, the students might have the opportunity to work with those who are
different from them in regards to gender, culture, ability, and language background. Lastly, I
would use materials such as questionnaires for students to evaluate the effectiveness of the group
work. In addition, I would want students to reflect on how the group work influenced their
learning.
This component of my intervention was to implement the five essential elements of
cooperative learning in order to build students confidence in group work activities. Group work
activities require students to have an understanding of how to problem solve. Problem solving
activities in this particular classroom would serve the purpose of having students actively
engaged in working at tasks and activities which are authentic to the environment in which they
would be used (Savery & Duffey, 2001, p.14). Thus, students would be expected to think

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critically and monitor their own understanding of important government concepts. Working in
groups to discuss important individual rights would expose students to differing opinions,
especially when the element of face to face interaction is used. Using different opinions and
perspectives to problem solve would interest students in group activities, especially if they can
apply the issues being discussed to their own life. For example, creating a mutual goal, such as
having the group teach the class about a Supreme Court case involving students, could create an
atmosphere of positive interdependence and hopefully lead to increased learning.
Another facet of this problem is the fact that the students are unmotivated and
uncommitted to learning. Due to the fact that they are more focused on their grades than actual
learning, it would appear that these students are extrinsically motivated. Thus, another action I
would need to take would be to find a way to intrinsically motivate the students to participate in
learning for its own sake. In a government and politics class, it is fairly easy to relate the material
being learned to the students out of school and future adult life. Thus, I would design classroom
activities around real-life situations so students would be able to see first-hand why what they are
learning is important. For example, I would use current events to teach about individual rights
and freedoms which would likely create cognitive conflict. According to Moreno, students
intrinsic motivation increases when teachers devise activities that expose students to alternative
ideas or theories (Moreno 2010). As many other high schools do, I would also require students
to volunteer in the community as a learning experience. For each learning objective I would aim
to reach these students on a personal level so they are more motivated to learn more about their
realities.
The last component of my intervention involves implementing techniques that would
intrinsically motivate students to learn. According to research on intrinsic motivation, humans

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have certain psychological needs, such as our innate needs for competence, autonomy, and
relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p.57). Thus, techniques used in the classroom would be based
on cognitive evaluation theory (CET), which specifies the factors that produce variability in
intrinsic motivation. In classroom interactions, my feedback and communication would be
constructive but positive in order to facilitate the feelings of competence, and thus, intrinsic
motivation. I would also avoid using tangible rewards, such as threats and competition pressure
as these directives diminish intrinsic motivation because, according to CET, people experience
them as controllers on their behavior (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p.59). Finally, government class
allows many opportunities for class discussions and insights that could likely hold intrinsic
interest for students. I would facilitate class discussions by using strategies such as presenting
real-life problems, creating cognitive conflict, using a variety of teaching methods, and tailoring
instruction to students interests. By using activities that have the appeal of novelty, challenge, or
aesthetic value for students, it will be easier to promote intrinsic motivation (Maehr 1991).
The intended outcome of this intervention plan is increasing students confidence in
participating in group activities and increasing intrinsic motivation to learn. As far as a timeline
goes, it is important to recognize that these changes will not happen overnight. Because learning
is an ongoing process, it will probably take awhile for students to begin to feel both comfortable
with group work and inspired to actively participate in classroom activities. As previously
mentioned, I will begin this process by evaluating previous methods to see what elements of
activities students enjoyed and which ones they learned the most from. Next, I will attempt to
design all group work activities so they contain the five essential elements of cooperative
learning. These would be relatively easy to implement and would only involve better
organization of groups and an alteration to classroom participation expectations. Next, I will aim

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to use a variety of strategies to elicit students interest and curiosity in an attempt to increase
intrinsic motivation. These strategies include presenting real-life problems, creating cognitive
conflict, using a variety of teaching methods, and tailoring instruction to students interests.
Being that this is a government class, all of these strategies would be applicable to most topics
covered in this course. For example, I would be able to use all of these in a unit about the First
Amendment. I would aim to implement all of these strategies in every lesson, where applicable.
Finally, I would use different evaluation methods, described below, in order to determine the
efficacy of these interventions.
In order to execute this intervention plan, I will need to maintain organized
documentation of each component attempted and the success of that approach in order to
evaluate for effectiveness. For the first component of my intervention, I would already be
engaging in the process of reviewing past assessments and activities for their effectiveness. This
would happen on my own time, either during a plan period or outside of school hours. In
addition, I plan to seek student input in determining which activities were enjoyable and
engaging through the use of comment cards to be filled out after every unit. Specifically, these
comment cards would outline the specific student learning goals of the entire course. Students
would be asked to rate their progress toward these goals based on the activities completed during
the unit. For example, if one of the course goals was to be able to problem-solve with a group,
the student would cite which activities helped them progress toward that goal. Students would
use class time to fill out these comment cards, likely with the remaining class time they have
after they finish a unit exam. This would be an effective evaluation method because according to
expectancy value theory, students will be more motivated to learn when they expect to reach
learning goals.

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For the second component of my intervention, I will use methods and strategies from the
group processing element of cooperative learning. In order to evaluate the efficacy of this
intervention, I will have students write a brief paragraph reflection as their ticket out of class
after each group activity. Thus, these short reflections will be completed during the last three to
five minutes of class time after a group activity. There would be three questions students would
have to answer on these reflections that relate to how effective the groups problem-solving skills
are. The first question would ask how the group is doing overall. The second question would ask
students to reflect on what is working well for their group. The third question would ask students
to list some aspect of the problem-solving activities that could be improved and what changes are
needed. As far as evaluating the students use of Deweys five-step problem solving model, I
would rely on observations to indicate if students actually use and understand those problemsolving strategies.
The third component of my intervention involves implementing techniques that would
intrinsically motivate students to learn. These strategies include presenting real-life problems,
creating cognitive conflict, using a variety of teaching methods, and tailoring instruction to
students interests. As far as evaluating these various strategies, I will mostly rely on observation
and interviews to determine their efficacy. As intrinsic motivation is something that is difficult to
measure, I will need to observe what activities students enjoy doing and what topics students
enjoy learning about. In order to tailor instructions to students interests, I will use informal
interviews to get to know my students on a more personal level. This can be done by standing at
the door at the beginning and end of the class period and chatting with students about activities
they are involved in or their favorite hobbies. I previously mentioned that my interactions with
students would need to be positive yet constructive in order for students to feel safe and

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respected and thus, intrinsically motivated to learn. Finally, I would also consider having
students fill out a course evaluation at the end of the semester. I would do this in order to receive
feedback on my classroom interactions with the students. As with most course evaluations, these
would take place on the last day of class and would be anonymous as to allow students answers
to be as honest as possible. I would then take this feedback into account when teaching new
subjects or new classes in an effort to adjust my instruction.

References
Maehr, M. L., & Midgley, C. (1991). Enhancing Student Motivation: A Schoolwide Approach.
Educational Psychologist, 26(3). Retrieved from
http://www.unco.edu/cebs/psychology/
kevinpugh/motivation_project/resources/maehr_midgley91.pdf
Moreno, R. (2010). Educational Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and
New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25. Retrieved from
https://

mmrg.pbworks.com/f/Ryan,+Deci+00.pdf

Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Problem Based Learning: An instructional model and its
constructivist framework. Center for Research on Learning and Technology,
16(1).

Retrieved from

http://jaimehalka.bgsu.wikispaces.net/file/view/Problem+based+learning
+An+instructional+model+and+its+constructivist+framework.pdf/154393315/Problem
%20based%20learning%20An%20instructional%20model%20and%20its
%20constructivist%20framework.pdf

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Wigfield, A. & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy-Value Theory of Achievement Motivation.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25. Retrieved from http://
acmd615.pbworks.com/f/ExpectancyValueTheory.pdf