Module 6 - Motivation

This week’s readings and activities emphasized the concept of persistence and self-regulation. Gladwell (2008) notes these skills in his discussion of the rice farmers in China. It is their desire to become more efficient and more profitable at what they do that drives them to continue to improve their farming techniques and make decisions on the types and quantities of rice crops that they will plant. In her discussion of growth-oriented teaching, Dweck (2006) notes how seemingly unnatural persistence is to students. This is something that also comes up in the videos that we watched this week, and was also discussed a lot in our previous section in information processing and problem solving. If, as Bandura notes, we are increasingly exposed to symbolic modeling through technology and media, how will the globalization of media will influence the way that we approach learning in the future? How is it influencing learners now?

According to Gladwell (2008), hard work is a part of success, but just as important are those chance circumstances and opportunities that influence individuals. This is also an idea supported by Bandura’s (2011) approach. Individuals are in charge of how they choose to behave in a situation once it presents itself. Their behavior will be the result of a variety of previous cultural, social, and personal experiences that will ultimately determine the action that they will choose to take. Similar is Dweck’s (2006) concept of the growth mindset, which acknowledges that all individuals have the potential to grow in a given domain, even if they are not “naturally talented” in that area. For instructors, I think that this would be a good approach to use because it implies that individual students always have potential to improve.

For teachers, the ultimate message found in this week’s readings is that you cannot ignore the individual experience or the environment when studying how one learns. This ties in with the constructivist approach offered by Vygotsky and Piaget in its emphasis on the individual connecting to the learning material in a personal way. There will always be a need for certain content to be learned, and, as Airasian and Walsh (1997) note, a firm methodology must be developed and followed in order for implementation to be successful, but this should not come at the expense of individual meaning making. After all, it is these individual connections that help students internalize the information in a way that it can be more easily retrieved later. There are a variety of factors that contribute to our beliefs in what we can and cannot do. These come from personal experience, symbolic modeling from those close to us as well as the social media, and other areas. It is important to take these into consideration because, once we do, we are able to help to influence a child’s future confidence in a positive way. The helpful hints provided by Dweck (2006) at the end of her chapter get at this point and also reiterate the powerful roles that parents, teachers, and other adults play in a child’s life. These seemingly small day-to-day experiences accumulate into a sum of experiences which the child may draw upon for some time to come. In striving to create meaningful and positive experiences, instructors can help the student to acquire good learning habits that they can continue to apply into adulthood.


References:

Airasian, P. W., & Walsh, M. E., (1997). Constructivist cautions. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, 444-449.

Bandura, A. (2011). But what about that gigantic elephant in the room? In R. Arkin (Ed.), Most unappreciated : 50 prominent social psychologists talk about hidden gems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little, Brown and Company.