MOTIVATIONAL THEORIES LEARNING

The descent of the word tells us that motivation refers to getting someone moving. When we motivate ourselves or someone else, we develop incentives - we set up conditions that start or stop behaviour. In education motivation deals with the problem of setting up conditions so that learners will perform to the best of their abilities in academic settings. We often motivate learners by helping them develop an expectancy that a benefit will occur as a result of their participation in an instructional experience. In short, motivation is concerned with the factors that stimulate or inhibit the desire to engage in a behaviour. Theories of learning and motivation, under the auspice of psychology, evolved from the assumption of no or limited free will in the learner, to theories that focus on the ability of learners to provide their own motivation. The most recent research attempts to integrate the role of external stimulation, thought processes and the neurological side of information retention.

When we look for ways to motivate students, we often look at people who have motivated us ourselves or who are famous for motivating other people. This is often a mistake: the people who have gained fame as motivators have often worked with special audiences who are not at all typical of the students who show up in our classrooms. While what these motivators do is effective with their selective audiences, it is possible that we ourselves deal with people who require entirely different motivational techniques. It is not even remotely reasonable to assume that the tactics that will make a group of football players eager to "win one for the Gipper" or a brigade of soldiers willing to march into the valley of death will have a similar impact on uninterested non-readers in the third grade.

Motivation is an extremely important but sometimes mundane topic. Motivation influences learners in complex ways. For example, in a single situation there may be numerous factors motivating learners to engage in a behaviour and an even greater number of factors motivating them to avoid that behaviour. A thorough understanding of the principles of motivation will enable you to get students moving - to want to participate and do their share in the instructional process.

Motivation is a force used within the educational system to encourage student learning and understanding. In the educational setting, motivation is either an internal force or external force. There are different theories of motivation in the educational setting, including those that state that student behaviour is dictated due to either external or internal factors. This discussion concerns the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and their effect on student learning and success within an educational setting. The motivation theory states that it is an individual's desire or drive to perform an action or achieve a set goal. This is applied in the educational process by encouraging the growth of motivation in students so they are driven to work toward goals and achievements throughout their educational career.

Students have varying abilities within the classroom; with this in mind, the motivation theory can be put in place to encourage students to develop their own abilities in the areas where they may need extra help. Teachers should create a set of grading standards for each subject so that students are evaluated based on effort and performance. Students can sign up for private tutoring if they are motivated to improve their abilities in a certain subject, for example.

Learning and performance goals can be established in the classroom to make use of the motivational theory. The teacher should incorporate goals within each lesson plan that would require students to write out goals for each subject or project within an academic semester. This will help motivate students to have something to work toward. Student motivation is less likely to diminish if they have written down the goals that they want to accomplish.

Students can often motivate each other through their peers. The teacher should require group work for certain projects and encourage students to get together to study material for homework and test preparation. The motivation theory applies to student interaction in the classroom because they are often driven to complete achievements based on how they compare themselves to one another. If one student sets a standard of academic or extracurricular achievement, more students are likely to be motivated to follow. Students that excel in one subject can be paired with those who may be struggling with that subject so that leadership and learning are engaged through peer interaction. Curricular- and self-assessment are ways that motivational theory becomes engaged in the classroom. Students are given grades for their work, which motivate them to complete homework and study hard. Students can also see their personal growth based on the standard that the curriculum and their peers are setting. This makes some students more motivated to work harder for their accomplishments in the classroom.

Throughout history, a number of psychological geniuses have developed various motivational theories. Many are still widely used to this day for various purposes, especially in the classroom. Motivation is affected greatly by the locus of control. The idea that a person feels their own decisions and actions determine their destiny indicates an internal locus. If the individual is operating using an external locus, they believe outside forces are responsible for the events that occur in their lives and feel they have little control situations. Those with an internal locus will often use intrinsic motivation, which is person centred and comes from within an individual, whereas those with an external locus may need extrinsic rewards or consequences as an effective motivational tool.

The school of psychology called "behaviourism" dominated the earliest research into learning and motivation. In 1903, Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov reported that he could train dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell and other cues normally unrelated to this otherwise instinctual behaviour, an association later called "classical conditioning."

In 1913, John B. Watson proposed that reward or punishment could train any person. B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism brought the movement to its greatest extreme, removing the role of human thought and feeling. In "Verbal Behaviour," published in 1957, Skinner summarized the brain as a simple input-output system, where even the complexity of language was simply a by product of environmental feedback.

Cracks in behaviourism's grip came with Noam Chomsky's influential criticism of Skinner's book in 1959. Behaviourism had overextended itself by failing to account for free will and innate capacity. Since the late 1970s and '80s, the cognitive model has dominated psychology: Rather than seeing people as simple input-output machines, this model posits that a person's background and how she learned to think about things influence her behaviour and learning ability.

According to humanistic theories set forth by Carl Rogers, motivation might come from within an individual without any thought to the external reward. Students receive their own internal reward through an increase in self-esteem and sense of achievement when they reach their desired goal. They may just feel the desire to succeed based on factors such as their own interest in an activity or the feeling of satisfaction that is achieved when they complete the necessary steps to achieve the desired accomplishment. This drive is called internal or intrinsic motivation, which means there are no outside forces that dictate whether an individual will ultimately achieve his goal. He does not attempt to achieve to receive an external reward works toward the intrinsic value associated with the success of the project. Students will be motivated to perform desired behaviours, and neither punishment or rewards are necessary to motivate the individual to succeed.

Students who need reinforcement to succeed are operating under the behaviourist theories set forth by B.F. Skinner, who suggests a punishment and reward system as a motivational tool. The external motivation that is required to drive the individual's positive behaviour is offered in the form of a system that reinforces the desired behaviour or negates undesirable actions. Students might receive a physical reward in terms of a pat on the back or a sticker on a completed paper. They might also receive negative consequences such as detention or a call home to parents. Through the administration of negative consequences for unwanted behaviours and positive reinforcement for the desired actions, students who respond to extrinsic motivation are more likely to succeed in their endeavours.

A cognitive approach to motivation is an intrinsic form that requires students to think through the consequences of their actions and base their decisions on the expected outcome of those decisions. If students are able to think through the situation at hand and determine the value of success, regardless of whether or not they gain a reward, they are operating under the internal locus of control. Students who are successful in the classroom usually operate under the internal locus of control. They do not put too much weight on mistakes or bad grades and are still able to maintain a level of esteem regardless of failures or successes. They use cognitive tools that allow them to keep a perspective on the perceived failure. They understand that if they do fail, it is probably because they did not study as they should. They do not blame external factors such as the teacher or classmates. They take responsibility for their own actions.

Students who are externally motivated are more likely to see the teacher, classroom, book or other external force as a reason for their failure. These students have an external locus of control and will tend to see their failure as all encompassing rather than a one-time mistake. Their self-esteem may suffer greatly due to this lack of cognitive focus and internal awareness. They tend to believe that their failure is related to their lack of ability, and they are more likely to give up if they do not achieve success continually.

One of the most important things a school can do is motivate students to learn about the world around them. This is the first step of learning, before any learning material is ever transferred to students. Learners must ultimately feel a sense of accomplishment because of their new knowledge and skills. Teachers can help them in many ways to attain this feeling, including effectively teaching them important material. Schools must endorse a particular motivation theory and teach accordingly.

Expectancy theory posits that behaviour choices are consciously made based on potential pleasure and pain compared to alternatives. The theory identifies three motivational elements: valence, expectancy and instrumentality. Valence is the emotional orientation people hold toward certain outcomes. Expectancy, the most important element of the theory, recognizes that students have different levels of confidence about what they are capable of doing. Instrumentality is about the trust students have that they will receive the rewards promised by their schools if they succeed in learning. Expectancy theory says schools must learn what rewards its students value before setting up incentives for learning and then deliver on their promises to maintain trust.

Attribution theory is based on the idea that learners are motivated by the positive feeling of self-efficacy that follows the completion of a challenging task. It emphasizes the importance of the learner's self-perception, which will influence future behaviour depending on the success or failure of current efforts. Attribution theory promotes an intrinsic motivation in which students pursue personal learning goals instead of typical performance goals, which are used only to avoid unfavourable judgment in the eyes of others. Personal learning goals create a situation in which failure is not fatal and only causes learners to increase their efforts when they fail to achieve their learning goals.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously described a "hierarchy of needs" that he asserts are shared by all people. Because this theory is hierarchical, it states that people do not try to address a higher need until the demands of the lower needs are met. From lowest to highest, Maslow's needs are physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization.

ERG theory is a simplification of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, except this is not a hierarchy at all, but a continuum. Clayton Alderfer developed the ERG theory, whose initials stand for existence, relatedness and growth. Existence corresponds with Maslow's first two levels of physiological and safety needs. Relatedness is about the social needs of people, closely resembling Maslow's needs for love and esteem. Growth, the highest level, is the feeling of success and personal development, a feeling that should take place in a classroom

every day. Schools can use this motivation theory by continually looking at each student's relative needs for existence, relatedness and growth, then working to satisfy these needs.

Motivation can be useful in the classroom for teaching all students to learn. It is important to model motivation and make sure that all students have a chance to be successful. This means that goals can be met, and students have many chances for many successful outcomes in their endeavours. In order to increase motivation in the learning environment, educational activities should be engaging and stress-free, allowing for creativity and selfimprovement. If students lack internal motivation to succeed, a behavioural rewards systems might be useful in helping some extrinsically motivated students to achieve an internal locus of control by allowing them successes, thereby increasing their self-esteem. Students should be given chances to display their works and enjoy all sorts of learning strategies that will allow them to succeed. Because all students are different, motivational techniques should be adapted to meet student needs to ensure an optimal learning experience for all children.