Motivation

Dec 1^st, 2010

I have done really well in my Educational Psychology class so far, yet I have only done okay in my English class. Why is this? It’s not that I’m any better at either subject, because English is my major. Shouldn’t I be doing better in English? 

We were learning about motivation in class today. There are three orientations to motivation:

Helpless- The person feels like they can’t do it, so they don’t even try; it kills motivation.

Performance- We’re motivated because of the outcome; focused on what’s to come. However, when we don’t get what we want, we feel vulnerable

Mastery- We’re not motivated for the image of success; for the material outcome. We’re doing it for ourselves because we want to accomplish things.

I’ve had personal experience with all of these. In high school, I was not very good at math. In fact, I took Math 30 Pure three times! (I passed the first time but I wanted a better grade; I failed the second two times.) I felt like there was no point in even trying, because I was going to fail anyways. I rarely, if ever, studied for or did homework for Math. This is a prime example of the helpless orientation to motivation. 

In the English class I’m taking currently, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do the homework. I do it, and I do it well, for the sole reason of the outcome; I want to do well in the class. If the homework I’ve been assigned wasn’t worth anything, I wouldn’t do it. I think that many of the assignments we’ve had are not beneficial to me at all; I am learning things I learned five years ago. I have about a B+ in that class right now. If the instructor gave more thrilling assignments, I might be motivated to do them, and I’d do better. This demonstrates a performance orientation to motivation.

In the Educational Psychology class I’m writing this blog for, I find it surprisingly easy to motivate myself. I feel like I will actually use most everything I’m learning in this class, so I study to learn, not because I want to do well. (Since I have an A in this class I think it’s working.)That’s not to say that I don’t want to do well; that’s always at the back of my mind, but that’s not the sole reason I study. I feel good about this; I feel like I’m doing this for me, not for my instructor. This illustrates the mastery orientation to motivation.

This motivation topic we’ve been studying really helped me to see why I’m doing so much better in Educational Psychology than in English; I like the class and the material we’re studying.

Hopefully, I can use this when I'm teaching. I will try to teach the students to learn for themselves, that knowledge is good! However, I may have to fall back on a performance orientation if my students are not motivated to do it for themselves.