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& Learning

#edupsych

University of Salford

Jenna Condie

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Session OverviewPart One: • Motivation as crucial to learning in formal contexts• Psychological understandings of motivation• Empowerment, Edutainment and Creativity

Part Two: • Identifying motivations to learn in a real case study• Interventions for increasing teacher expectations• Divergent thinking and creativity • Creating motivating seminars

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Motivation defined – what is it?“…the psychological processes that lead us to do certain things” (Long, 2007, p. 104)

Is motivation a general quality? Is motivation relatively specific to activity?Is it better considered as a process?

Image created on Visual Thesaurus

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Effectance motivation (White, 1959)Babies are born with a desire to master their environment

Behaviour

Feedback

Expected OutcomesGoals

Control/ Agency

Flickr: Wayan Vota

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Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation – that from within the individual

Flickr: Official U.S. Navy Imagery

Extrinsic motivation - that from outside an individual.

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Educational context…

• Teachers face difficulties in attempts to monitor motivation in classroom directly.

• Educational definitions of motivation focus on academic achievement and involvement with tasks at school (Long, 2007)

• Motivation in school as crucial to meaningful learning “You don't have to be great to start,

but you have to start to be great” Zig Ziglar

Motive: A reason for doing something, esp. one that is hidden or not obvious

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The classroom as decontextualised: Imagining learning about urban regeneration…

Flickr: EG Focus

Which method requires more motivation?

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When motivation isn’t an issue…

Learning happens because it is contextualised, knowledge that is useful and meaningful

(Bruner 1966) Flickr: courosa

Before school Cultures without formal education Flickr: International Rivers

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The Self

• Sense of agency - control & choice• Mastery Orientation – belief that your

achievements are based on your own efforts (Bukatko & Daehler, 2012)

• Mastery Orientation vs learned helplessness

“Regardless of the theoretical orientation, the self is considered nowadays as multiple, varied, changeable, sometimes as chameleon that changes along with the context” (Salgado & Hermans, 2009, p. 3)

Flickr: tonyhall

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If ‘who we are’ is not fixed, then can people develop identities of learning?

Rahm and Ash (2008)• Out-of-school learning environments enabled

‘disenfranchised youth’ to take on an identity as insiders to the world of science

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Aspirations

In relation to lower income families: "Differences in the education aspirations of parents are probably the most important factor explaining the gap in school completion rates,"

Polidano (2012), University of Melbourne, High School Completion Study ScienceDaily Article here

Shared on #edupsych this week

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Against the odds: How Working Class Children Succeed (Siraj Blatchford, 2010) ‐

Home Learning Environment (HLE) - most significant factor in predicting children’s learning outcomes.

Flickr: henry…

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Self-Expectations• Human motivation as dependent upon outcome

expectations (Bandura, 1977)• Self-efficacy - personal judgments of one’s

capabilities to attain designated goals (Bandura, 1986)

• Self-efficacy beliefs in self-regulated Learning (SESRL) (Zuffianò et al., 2012)

• Complex relationship between self-esteem & academic achievement (see Baumeister et al., 2003)

Flickr: breahn

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Teacher Expectations • A classic area of study A.K.A the self-fulfilling

prophecy• Pygmalion experiment (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968)

– relationship between teacher expectations and student performance

• Brophy (1985) whole class teacher expectation likely to have greater effect than teachers expectation for individual students

• Rubie-Davies (2006) Study of HiEx and LoEx teachers - class level expectation important for student learning

Flickr: Gates Foundation

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Alternatively, are some not buying into the education success story i.e. good education = good job?

Flickr: -eko-

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Empowerment: A Humanistic Perspective

• Move away from the economic story of education. • The role of education is to empower – to be able to

think and to do. • “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to

entertain a thought without accepting it” (Aristotle)• In control of learning (student-driven). • Tasks that are intrinsically motivating. • Encourages learning beyond the formal context. • However, the realities of teaching and curriculum

coverage constrain this teaching style (Long, 2007)

Flickr: Capture Queen ™

(Lefranois, 1994)

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Edutainment

“Edutainment” - a hybrid genre that relies heavily on visual material, on narrative or game-like formats, and on more informal, less didactic styles of address. (Buckingham & Scanlon, 2000, cited in Okan, 2003)

Flickr: Gustty

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Play for Learning

• Formal schooling tends to restricts play to early years. • Play for mastery of skills • Play theories (Piaget, 1951; Smilansky 1968) • Serious educational games research: – Amory et al., (1999) concluded adventure games provide

educators with superior mechanisms to entice learners into environments where knowledge is acquired through intrinsic motivation

A voluntary activity that is intrinsically motivating

(Amory et al., 1999)

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Creativity“Creativity is usually

defined as a combination of novelty and

appropriateness and has been associated with problem-solving and

novelty generation as well as with reactive and

adaptive behaviour that allows people to cope up

with turbulent environments”

(Berglund & Wennberg, 2006, p. 368)

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Creativity and Learning• Links back to enterprise and workplace – creativity has

wide appeal (see Plucker et al., 2004)• But don’t say the ‘C Word’!• Divergent thinking– Really important or just a little important?

• More knowledge now about creativity• Lacking strategies to enhance creativity• How to think (current/future), not what to think

(traditional model)

Flickr: Cea.

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Potential of creativity rarely fulfilledWhy? “Creativity is important to society, but it traditionally has been one of psychology’s orphans” (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999, p. 4).

Six Barriers1 Mystic and spiritual origins; 2 Negative effects of pop psych & commercial

approaches; 3 Early work conducted in relative isolation from

mainstream psychology4 Elusive or trivial definitions5 Negative effects of viewing creativity as an

extraordinary phenomenon6 Narrow, unidisciplinary approaches

Can you think of any other barriers?

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How to move forward?

Reconceptualise creativity (Plucker et al., 2004)“Creativity is the interaction among aptitude,

process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both

novel and useful as defined within a social context.” Flickr: mtsofan

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Group Work

Learning Outcomes• Apply your knowledge of motivation to a real

case study. • Recognise individual differences in motivation • Develop a teacher expectation intervention. • Examine creativity and look for evidence of

divergent thinking. • Consider motivations to learn in relation to your

assignment seminars.

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& Learning

#edupsych

University of Salford

Jenna Condie