Motivation
“This article should be rewritten. Only use it to grab some ideas and pointers to further reading ... DSchneider”
Definition
- Motivation is that which gets a behavior started and keeps it going. ([1])
- A need or desire to reinforce a behavior or to orient it towards a goal (Myers)
Often, on makes a distinction between intrinsic motivation (desire to do something for personal, internal reasons) and extrinsic motivation (seek recompensation and avoid punishment), but the two are very much linked and difficult to separate.
- Why motivation ? It is related to
- attention level
- activity level
- perseverance
- maximal [cognitive load | mental load] level
- See also Affect, self-efficacy theory, flow theory
A short (chaotic) overview of specialized theories
- This is just an outline, mostly based on Motivation by Marilla Svinicki)
- Drive
Drive theories are behaviorist and/or cognitivist in nature and explain behavior as as response to psychological and social needs. The relation between need and motivation can be described as a feedback system. The bigger the need the bigger motivation and the lesser the need, the lesser the motivation. E.g. We are more motivated to eat when we hungry and less motivated after we have eaten. Regarding instruction, learners in these models are rather passive and the environment (materials, teachers, etc.) in control.
- Needs, goals and social interaction.
Needs are cognitively elaborated into concrete motivational goals and means-end structures. Being motivated means striving for goals which are by definition not yet realized at the moment that they are formulated or expresses (Nuttin, 1980). The individuals hopes and expects to reach them at a certain moment in time as a consequence of his actions. There are three degrees of activation: (1) passive action to respond to stimulus, (2) respond actively to selected stimuli and (3) change the environment. At levels two and three, goals and the anticipated outcome are the source of motivation. Good goals are: clear, personally relevant, proximal, progress can be seen, interim successes are possible.
One can distinguish between learning goals (desire to be able to master a task) and performance goals (desire to appear competent or at least better than the others).
- Emergent motivation
- Motivation comes from engaging in the task itself
- Motivation comes from new goals that arise as a consequence of interaction with the environment
- flow (complete involvement)
- Self and satisfaction
For Greenwald (1982), the 'self' becomes involved in an activity in three conditions:
- Social evaluation (I want to please the crowd)
- Self-evaluation (intrinsic motivation)
- Personal values/interests/goals.
F. Herzberg's 5 factors motivation/demotivation model is based on the idea that motivation is related to internal satisfaction dependent on external factors:
- achievment,
- recognition for achievment,
- work itself,
- responsability,
- social progression.
Motivation is a therefore a result of the job content (or the learning activity).
- Human information processing and the task environment
Warr (????) describes motivation as a cognitive process that concerns future planned actions and that can be based on a set of reasons:
- Intrinsic desirability of immediate results
- Intrinsic desirability of further outcome
- Social comparison
- Social pressure
- Career and development aims
- Expected subjective probability of a "project"
- Habits
- Other current desires and potential actions
- The structure of the action
A similar model concerns the characteristics of the task and the job environment (Hackman and Oldman, 1976): Factors influencing motivation are:
- Variety of tasks (and accordingly of skills, abilities, talents used)
- Does the job require completion of tasks ? (task identity)
- Meaning of tasks, i.e. its impact on the immediate or external environment (significance)
- Autonomy, i.e. how can the person organize tasks and select appropriate procedures.
- Feedback on activities, i.e. to what degree does the worker receive useful comments but also to what degree can he observe results of his work.
These theories had important impact on how work should be designed. In simple terms, work is more motivating if tasks are varied and meaningful, if the worker can exercise control. On the other hand task also should lead to results that are acknowledged by the environment. According to many studies, these models don't work for everyone but best for people who do have "growth needs".
- Attribution
How does the actor/learner explain what happens to him ? How does he explain the outcome (e.g. success and failure). Dimensions of causes that learners attribute can be:
- internal / external cause:
- e.g. talent, effort, intellectual power, learning strategy vs. difficulty of the task, competence of the teacher, etc.
- stable / transitory (unstable, variable)
- permanent vs. random or changing because of various external factors
- controllable / not controllable
- students believes that can do something about it.
- local / global
- intentional / non-intentional
Of course the pedagogical design and the teacher can influence these perceptions. In empirical studies these factors also show up in combinations related to given issues and affect. Philipp Dessus (2001) summarizes Crahay, 1999, p. 284 and Archambault