Reflection #5: Membership

What struck me most were the peer group and membership sections. In these sections it spoke about student involvement and students really feeling like they belong. As a football player, I am apart of a core group. I see the influences of being a part of the football team everyday, bother positive and negative.  As a football player I know that I was more motivated to make certain grades in order to be able to play in games. I was also motivated to stay academically eligible to stay on the team. This is also true for other sports and school groups. Being a part of these groups motivates you to do your best just to stay part of the group.

            The football team was very important to me in high school. That was my social bond. They were my friends, and basically like brothers to me. If any took that away from me, who knows where I would be. I liked the Alderman chapter a lot because it spoke about the influence of being in such social groups. As an educator who was influenced by a social group, I think it is important for me to remember the importance of these social interactions. I think these connections I vital to motivation within the classroom, but I also believe it is important to show students that that is only a piece of the puzzle.

            As an athlete and student I found it hard to differentiate what was important. At times I thought that it didn’t matter what I did in school as long as I performed in school. As college was becoming a more realistic goal, I knew that was far from the truth. I had to make the grade and perform on the field. This is where student interest came into play. In the Role of Interest article, it spoke about the importance of student interest.  My English teacher really took the time to see what I was interested in. He started showing me books about sports and different stories that had topics that I would want to read about. His extra effort showed me that there was thing in school that I actually like and could spend time on.

            As a teacher I think it is always important for me to meet students where they are. I have to figure out what they like, and find things that they are interested in. As student-athlete it is really important to me to help other kids with potential. I think that other athlete’s with skills get looked over because no one wants to take the time to help them make the grade.  I would definitely be a teacher to help other students stay on track and help them fulfill their full potential. 

Relfection 4: Self-Efficacy Sources

            One of the most interesting things to me from the readings this week is the different sources of self-efficacy. There are many ways that students create a positive or negative sense of self-efficacy. It is important as educators that we always find the most effective combination of these sources to keep students motivated. Many of these sources are centered on how a person perceives certain actions or experiences, but because we are a driving force able to help with motivation, it is important that we help create positive perceptions.

Performance Outcomes

“If people experience only easy successes they come to expect quick results and are easily discouraged by failure. A resilient sense of efficacy requires experience in overcoming obstacles through perseverance effort. Some setbacks and difficulties in human pursuits serve a useful purpose in teaching that success usually requires sustained effort. After people become convinced they have what it takes to succeed, they persevere in the face of adversity and quickly rebound from setbacks. By sticking it out through tough times, they emerge stronger from adversity.”

This passage is one of the most interesting things I have read throughout this course. The passage above speaks to not only perseverance, but also to the fact that struggling is sometimes a good thing. This passage is speaking about past experiences. If a student has many experiences where they overcome obstacles they are more likely to be motivated even when something is hard. Many kids think that once they are bad at something they will never be good at it and give up. If we create the right combination of challenging tasks and easy tasks, then students can have a positive outlook on future obstacles that may arise. This passage reaffirms my belief that even if you may struggle with something, that struggle can be worth it in the end if it helps you overcome a bigger mountain.

Vicarious Experience (modeling)

            I think that this source of positive self-efficacy is the most obvious. If students see others succeeding at something they are trying to do, they become more motivated to succeed themselves. This is especially true in football. If you are on a competitive team, then you fight everyday for your position. You always judge how well you are doing based on how the other player going for your spot is doing. Yes, at the end of the day you are on the same team, but there is still that competitive nature that drives you to want to do better. You judge your own capability by the capability of those in the same position as yourself.

Social Persuasion

            Social Persuasion is probably the most important source of positive self-efficacy that educators have the largest hand in. This is basically coaching. This is someone telling the student that they can do the task in front of them. Just like football teams have a coaching staff, so should students. A football team has a head coach, but there are also many other coaches that help keep the team going. Each position has a coach responsible for keep each position’s players on track and motivated to do their job. I think this same thinking should be applied to students. Each student needs a coach to reassure them that they can do whatever they put his or her mind to.

            I know from personal experience that I always needed that one person in my corner to really push me to keep trying. Just one person can have a major impact in another person’s efforts. Sometimes its that little boost that will help a student continue to keep trying.

Emotional Status    

           

            This source of positive self-efficacy tells me to try my best to keep my students happy. When a student is happy they are more likely to want to do anything, and that is just common sense. If a kid feels sad, they will be less likely to be motivated to keep trying when they are doing poorly. Negative attitudes lead to negative results. Keeping kids motivated has a lot to do with how they feel, and if they feel bad, then they believe they will do badly.

I highlighted the sources of self-efficacy during this reflection because I feel like it is important for us to know how we can setup our students to have the best shot possible to succeed. There are a lot of ways we can affect these sources, and it is important that we make a positive impact.

Reflection 3: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

One of the most important things I took away from the readings for this week is the importance for kids to be inspired for themselves. There are many different theories and ways in which we try to classify motivation, but i’ve learned the most important motivation is intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is when a student is motivated to do something for themselves. This is why intrinsic motivation is a very powerful tool within the classroom. When students are intrinsically motivated to do academic task they are more likely to have positive results.

While I do believe intrinsic motivation is the most important driving force, the readings have shown me that a combination between both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can also be successful. The right type of extrinsic motivation can be helpful in achieving academic goals. There are 4 types of extrinsic motivation: external regulation, introjection, identification, integration. External regulation are behaviors fueled by the need to fulfill and external demand. Introjection is when a person feels pressure around a task. Identification regulation is when a person has identified with a task and adopts that regulation. Lastly, there is integration regulation which occurs when someone’s identified regulations become completely assimilated with his or her own values and beliefs. While some types of extrinsic motivators can be harmful to positive learning, some can be useful. If we pair intrinsic motives such as mastery with an extrinsic motive like moving on to the next grade level, positive outcomes can occur.

All of this new information on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation informs my own practice by helping me to keep in mind the different types of motivation involved with learning. I think if we spend more time figuring out what motivates students it will be easier to guide them to the right strategies that fill that type of need. 

I can also relate this to teaching football because to be good at football you can hold yourself to extrinsic motivators, but to be great you really have to have motives within yourself. If you don't push yourself to be great at football you can never reach your full potential. This same idea can be applied to students and learning. Yeah, students can just get by, but to really maximize the learning experience students have to have that intrinsic motivation.

Reflection 2/ Module 2- Attribution Theory, Expectancy-Value Model, and Achievement Motivation

Attribution theory discusses the different models that justify how students explain different behaviors and events in the future based on things that happened in the past. Attribution occurs in different layers. Causal attributions ( effort, ability, task difficulty, luck) are characterized either unstable or stable, internal or external, and controlled or uncontrolled to lead to a certain opinion of a task.

Attribution theory is related to expectancy-value model because it includes a similar idea that outcomes from the past will continue in the future. Students expect what has happened to continue to happen.

When you start off playing football young you play a lot of different positions. Parents usually push their kids to do as much as possible. As a kid when you see you aren't good at one position you often give up or get moved to different position. The main reason many kids make multiple position changes are the parents. After you find a position you're good at, you stick to that and are motivated to get even better at that position. This reminds me of expectancy-value models because even though you do see the value in knowing new knowledge about different positions you still don't expect to be good at it. This same experience can relate to attribution theory because you may blame that poor performance at that position to any one of the causal attributions. Depending on how you characterize those causal attributes you may or may not ever try that position again or hire a trainer to help you at that position if its something you really want to do.

Additionally, I found that the ideas around value were interesting. I think the struggle for kids to see the value in what they're doing is one of the hardest challenges. Kids always wanna know "Why I gotta do this?" As much as we even struggle to find an answer to that question, I do think it's important to have one. In one of the readings it explained that even though students don't think they will do well they will still complete a task if they see the value in it.  

In my previous class we discussed how technology is helping students see the value in what they are doing in schools around the world.

Reflection 1/ Module 1: Motivation, Maslow, and ARCS model

            For this first week we focused on what motivation is, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the ARCS model. I always find information about motivation and how to motivate students to be particularly interesting because, like many students today, I was also not very motivated in school. It took me a long time to find something to motivate me to put effort in school. For me this motivation was football at a young age. I knew in order to play I had to make decent grades. The challenge during this day and age is to motivate students from the beginning stages of school so that they can have greater success in the future.

            What I found interesting about both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the ARCS model is that is essential for students to have certain things to help them achieve success. Maslow proposed that one couldn’t gain access to greater knowledge if certain needs aren’t met. A person unlocks different levels of knowledge as each need is met. As these levels are unlocked this is where learning come into play. Kids can only learn if these needs are being met. I found Maslow’s ideas to be particularly interesting because when working with high-risk children and youth like I did, you can see this everyday. If a child is having problems at home, or is lacking the proper care, he or she is often not focused or interested in what is taking place in class. This can also be linked to why children who live in high-risk areas tend to not do as well in school. These children are not having all the proper needs met so they struggle to unlock the different levels of knowledge they need to be academically successful. According to Maslow: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs must be fulfilled at least satisfactorily for learning to occur. 

            The ARCS model works in a similar way by proposing that certain needs must be met in order for kids to be motivated within the classroom. Attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction increase the chances for students to be motivated. Just as Maslow proposed, the ARCS model also puts into play a list of needs. In my opinion the ARCS model seems obvious, but in many cases schools do not put this model into practice. Students are bored to sleep with rote learning and having to sit at a desk all day. The typical culture of learning does not utilize the ARCS method, but it really should. On the ARCS model website they ask the very important question: “How do you keep your students motivated?” This question should be a constant question in a teachers mind because students are not being pushed to do better in the ways that they could.