- Intrinsic motivation is used to get the student to achieve or at least try to achieve. Extrinsic motivation would help more with getting the student to go above and beyond.
- If I can provide short term goals for making progress that the students can achieve, they will be more intrinsically motivated. Getting students involved in the class would also help.
Should we completely fix their expectations for success? It’s good for their confidence. If you want to lower their expectations, give them tougher things to work with. I’d use it my advantage and start teaching them things that they believe they can do. It’s good for them to have a lot of confidence early on, so they’ll try things and see what they like. Self-confidence goes down eventually and they may not want to try certain things anymore.
ReplyDeleteI think they really love school at the beginning because it’s a new experience. Eventually they get in trouble when they don’t do so well because the topics aren’t as easy, and they aren’t motivated by their new, exciting, big-kid surrounding. Parents start offering rewards for grades.
Younger children are just very bad at judging or predicting their own knowledge/performance. I've read a study about children predicting their score on a test, and it was clear that the predictions at younger ages were WAY OFF while they became closer to the actual score as children got older. It's just a metacognitive deficit that children have at younger ages, and mainly a developmental thing rather than something that can be taught.
ReplyDeleteMy guess for the shift in motivation is that school depends A LOT on extrinsic motivation factors like grades. Once students begin to value grades as measuring their success, it's difficult to get out of that frame. Of course, some subjects will still be more interesting and motivating for them, but 'the goal' in most schools is to get good grades, not to 'enjoy the material'.
this is a really great question...because we don't want to discourage them...i think that amaybe challenging the younger students more would make them realize that there will be problems that are hard and that they won't know the answer to. They must know that they will have to study or learn a concept in order to get it right...doing this with a positive attitude would be effective.
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