Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

1. The students who are only extrinsically motivated are less likely to learn the
material to the same level as the students who are intrinsically motivated,
although extrinsically motivation may very well produce productive learning
behaviors in the students. The extrinsically motivated students are likely to
produce only the bare minimum of effort to learn the material while the
intrinsically motivated students are likely to pursue the task on their own.
The intrinsically motivated students are also more likely to pay attention to
the task and they may be more inclined to aim for a true understanding and
not just enough to get the grade.

One way to promote intrinsic motivation is to help the students develop a

sense of self-determination. This would involve reducing the threats,
deadlines, and controlling statements and increasing the choices for the
students to make them feel more in control. However, there are some limits
to this, especially when it comes to deadlines. Academic courses in Georgia
high schools just have too many standards to do in the time allowed to
expect students to be able to set their own deadlines all of the time. A second
method to increase the intrinsic motivation of students is to address their
need for relatedness. On the part of the teacher, this means letting the
students know that you genuinely care about their success in the classroom
and in them as a person. By showing the students respect, a teacher can
often get more out of the students. I learned this first hand when starting out
as a teacher in an inner-city alternative school. Many of these students would
be difficult to motivate for months until they finally realized that I wasn’t out
to get them. Suddenly, they’d go from guaranteed failures to making passing
grades. Working with normal students in a regular high school, this process
typically is much shorter, a day or two for my college prep courses, but it’s
still important. In the lower grades, need for approval may make positive
reinforcement a useful tool for encouraging intrinsic motivation. However,
this strength of this method tends to lessen as students get older in Western
cultures.

2. The first level in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are the physiological needs like
food, water, oxygen, warmth, exercise, rest and the like. In other words, the
needs that cause you to die if they aren’t met in a timely fashion. If I’m
suffocating, for example, I’m not learning anything during that time. If my
stomach is rumbling, I’m more concerned about finding lunch than I am my
Human Learning book. The second level is the safety needs. Simply put, if a
student does not feel safe, they won’t learn. Students in abusive homes may
struggle in class because of this as well as students who are aggressively
picked on by their peers. The third level, love and belongingness needs, are
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

related to how one fits in. Humans originally had to be a part of a group in
order to survive, so this need is pretty well ingrained in us and even if that
kid who was picked on in my previous example didn’t feel unsafe, he or she
probably won’t feel like they fit in and may spend more cognitive energy
fretting about that than on their class work. The esteem level is very similar
to the love and belongingness need, although here the individual with this
need will be more driven to find respect than just to fit in. This is the level
when the geeky kid has finally learned the social skills to fit in and now
decides to go out for the football team or run for class officer for the respect
that come from both. The top tier is the need for self-actualization. People at
this level of needs are looking to make the most of themselves. For example,
I’m well (overly) fed, live in a safe area with a wife who doesn’t hit me too
often, I’m surrounded by members of a boringly functional family, and I’ve
never felt disrespected and so have never worried much about it (at least
since middle school). Because of this, I’m more worried about where I’d like
to take my education and I further it, reading the works of great authors, and
improving my writing than I am about supper.

3. Self-worth theory states that humans (and individuals of other species, even)
have a basic need to feel competent at dealing with their environment. This
keeps the person from feeling helpless and hopeless and gives them the
ability to feel that they are able to do what they need to do in order to
survive and thrive.

Self-handicapping is a method of preserving an individual’s sense of self-

worth by sabotaging their own chances of success. This is counterintuitive,
but by making the task even more difficult than it has to be, it provides a
justification for their failure.

4. A sense of competence is the feeling than an individual is able to deal with

their environment successfully. In academic setting as a kid, I always had a
sense of competence. Good grades always came easily for me, so I never felt
like I wouldn’t be able to handle new lessons. On the opposite end of the
spectrum, my dad is a bit of a handyman, but I’ve never felt competent at
working with my hands, to the point that I tend to avoid trying to fix or build
things now. Self-determination means that the individual feels like they have
control over themselves, the task, or environment. One of the reasons I
enjoyed making deliveries when I worked as an intern at an advertising
agency in college was that I had a sense of self-determination when I did that
part of my job. It was up to me to find the route to the delivery site. The only
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

part of the job that was forced on me was the delivery. How I did it was
entirely up to me as long as I didn’t spend all day delivering a package next
door.

To help with self-determination students can be given choices in

assignments. This does require more prep work for the teacher, but by giving
the student a choice between assignments, when they are of appropriate
difficulty and both teach or assess the same learning, the student feels like
they have some control over their learning. Another method to improve self-
determination is by removing the appearance of evaluation. One study
mentioned in the book involved instructing the students to learn the material
to actually teach it to other students. In this way the teacher could still assess
the learning by observing the students teaching, but the students actually
don’t feel like they’re being assessed. For a sense of competence, scaffolding
would be effective. If the student has a low sense of competence, then
assignments should start off simple with some form of assistance that is
gradually taken away as the student becomes more comfortable. Similarly,
identifying areas of missing prior knowledge and resolving those areas of
inadequacy could help build a sense of competence.

5. The need for relatedness is the need to be a part of the group or to fit in.
Humans are social mammals and tend to not do so well when socially
isolated. Students who try to dress like the popular kids would be showing a
high need for relatedness, as well as the student who always tries to help
other students.

The need for relatedness could be helped by group projects, especially if the
teacher trains the students on how to work well together and offer
constructive criticism instead of insults. In this way, the students are a part of
a group working toward the same goals and are more likely to have a positive
experience in that group.

Finally, it’s important that the teacher be seen as a positive and supportive
part of the classroom. This doesn’t mean that the teacher should be lax on
discipline or try to be the students’ friend. Instead, it means to treat all
students fairly and show genuine interest in them and their lives. For some
students, accepting that the teacher is for real takes longer, but I’ve rarely
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

had a student that didn’t eventually come around and accept that I wasn’t
their enemy and they usually worked better in my classes because of it.

6. Anxiety, a high state arousal about an uncertain future, can actually help
students on simple or automatic tasks. For example, a timed addition drill
may help students perform the task better as long as they are competent
with that level of addition. However, if the task is more difficult, the problems
are beyond their level of competency, then the same level of anxiety may
actually hurt their performance. The former is facilitating anxiety. The latter
is debilitating anxiety. Considering the fact that the work that a teacher
assigns should be challenging for their students, the level of anxiety in his or
her students does not need to be high. One way to keep excessive anxiety
away is to help the students master the material and study habits to the
point that they are very likely to succeed on the assessment. When the
student is comfortable with the material, he or she is less likely to be anxious.
Another way to reduce anxiety is to employ appropriate scaffolding. The
student may need that scaffolding in the beginning to calm them, but
eventually the scaffolding can be gradually peeled away.
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

ANALOGRAMS

Name ________________________________________________________

Directions: In the statement "CAT is to KITTEN as DOG is to PUPPY," the first two
items, CAT and KITTEN, bear a relationship that is shared by the second two, DOG
and PUPPY.

In the problems below, 20 more analogies await your problem solving. The first two
words of each analogy appear at the left. The 20 words that go in the blanks to
complete them are arranged alphabetically in the column at the right. Each of the
words in the column will be used exactly once, so you may cross them out as you
proceed. A word of warning: Keep your mind flexible; some of the
relationships are completed in unexpected ways.

1. ANKLE is to FOOT as wrist is to hand

2. FLOCK is to BIRD as school is to fish

3. CURB is to STREET as bank is to river

4. BAKER is to DOUGH as potter is to clay

5. WORM is to FISHHOOK as cheese is to mousetrap

6. WAND is to MAGICIAN as baton is to conductor

7. SEE is to SAW as bear is to bore

8. STATIC is to RADIO as snow is to television

 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

9. RACKET is to COURT as bat is to diamond

10. CROW is to ROOSTER as bay is to wolf

11. CAR is to GARAGE as airplane is to hangar

12. CUP is to GOLF as pocket is to pool

13. SERGEANT is to ESTRANGE as general is to enlarge

14. PIG is to SNOUT as duck is to bill

15. CRACK is to CHINA as run is to stocking

16. FLAKE is to SNOW as drop is to rain

17. PEA is to QUEUE as tea is to you

18. RAZOR is to BEARD as scythe is to weeds

19. WONDER is to UNDERWAY as wrecks is to x-ray

20. PITCHER is to CATCHER as pillbox is to callbox

 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 15

Response to Chapter 15 Handout: This handout lists several activities each of the
four elements of intrinsic motivation, curiosity, challenge, mastery, and autonomy. I
think for many teachers, at least those like myself, the activities for encouraging
curiosity and autonomy are the most useful, not because the others lack use, but
because we don’t know how to pique curiosity and encourage autonomy as well as
we know how to teach for mastery and challenge our students. Challenging one’s
students and making sure they have the basics down before taking them to
something more difficult seem to be fairly basic parts of education. Curiosity and
autonomy are probably as important as the other two, at least according to this
assignment’s reading, but how to teach to encourage them doesn’t seem to be as
obvious as it is with mastery and challenge.