On Motivation and Self-Regulation

Discussion Question from Dr. Barth-Cohen

Imagine you work in HR for a large company.  Your department has been tasked with implementing a new online system that will be used for tracking benefits and compensation. Many employees are apprehensive about the new system and across the company people have different levels of comfort with computers.  How will you design the training materials to help ease the transition? What challenges might you encounter?

Well, then, I was required to do this.  Well, not benefits and compensation.  Training on how to use tablets in classrooms.  There was no HR and we were in a remote town on the west coast of the Red Sea.  Most of my fellow employees, especially the instructors, were not just apprehensive.  They were openly, verbally hostile about new online systems as they sat coughing into their Turkish coffee in the smoking area.  

What I did was create brief YouTube tutorials: Quizlet, SimpleDifferent Website Builder, and Merriam Webster for Speech-to-Text

I got a number of visits to my YouTube channel from my colleagues.  Of course, as the saying goes, the old desert dogs did not want to learn new tricks.  Many of them said they simply couldn't.  Several of these gentlemen were in there sixties and lamented that the had no "tech savvy" or that all of this was just gadgety and teaching with tech was silly.  

I think one of the biggest challenges in motivating these gents was that the things they had been doing, for some of them, for forty years were still working.  They witnessed newer, younger teachers in their early twenties who were tech geeks, yet could not build rapport with college-age Saudi boys.  What do you do?  

I have tons of patience for my students.  And, of course, I considered those gents my students.  I would sit down with them in front of a computer, one-on-one, and walk them through the process.  I also would come and present the model in my colleagues classes, or invite them to observe my classes.  

At the end of the day, motivation has to come from inside, of course.  I think the adage about the horse refusing to drink is only partially true.  Young horses haven't been broken by the System and the Establishment, yet.  Young learners may refuse to drink from tech, but you can usually model it for them or have a fellow student model it for them, as in this video of one of my Saudi boys modeling pronunciation using the Merriam Webster app powered by the Google speech-to-text engine:

Once they witness its benefits, they usually buy in.

Digital immigrants (or whatever they might be called - guess they're not "immigrants" if they refuse to come over with us . . . maybe "digital aliens") are a much harder sell, generally.  Just a lot of coaxing and baby-stepping.  In my experience, though, they've already made up their minds that the water is poisoned and nothing on Earth is going to make them drink it.  

I'm very optimistic, still.  

Constructivism/Motivation Theory Wiki

Constructivism/Motivation Theory Wiki

Constructivist Definition of Learning

In terms of the Constructivist theories of psychology and philosophy, learning is a discovery process within individual learners based on their perceptions of their subjective worlds, interactions with that world and its feedback, and interactions within that learner’s cultural and societal groups.  

Definitions and Examples: Active, Constructive, and Interactive Learning

Chi (2009) defines active learning as “doing something physically” engaging such as “[l]ook, gaze, or fixate” to “activate existing knowledge,” as well as “[s]earch existing knowledge” (p. 77). A good example might be a field trip to the Musee de Louvre in Paris and admiring the history and progression of art.

Constructive learning is defined as “[p]roducing outputs that contain ideas that go beyond the presented information” (Chi, 2009, p. 77).  These would include explaining, justifying, and connecting activities that are considered “self-construction.”  In this process, the learner infers, integrates, and organizes new knowledge.  Examples would include the meta-cognitive strategy of annotating a scholarly article in the margins with a self-descriptive shorthand that might help the learner better understand the passage.

Interactive learning is defined as “[d]ialoguing substantively on the same topic, and not ignoring a partner’s contributions” (Chi, 2009, p. 77).  Compared the constructive, these would be guided activities such as revising a draft of one’s research paper based on the feedback given by the instructor.  This is a joint process and always involve a dialogue with contributions from both sides.

Origins of Constructivism

Constructivism stems from the great psychological, philosophical, and science educational thinkers of the 21st Century, including Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, Kuhn, Derrida and Foucault.  and why are they important?  Perhaps in reaction to pragmatic ideas in Behaviorism and Cognition where the world is something outside of the learner to be discovered, responded to, encoded, and objectively known, Constructivism posits knowledge as subjective and internal to the learner.  Cognitive Development and Social Interactionist theories contributed to the Constructivist understanding that a learner’s knowledge will best evolve when with introspection and problem solving tempered by verification and validation from peer interactions.

Weaknesses as a Theory

Some of the weaknesses of the theory of Constructivism include lack of attention to entry behavior of learners and that knowledge constructions within the learner may have very little to do with or correlation with how the objective world works.

A Model of Constructivist Learning

Yilmaz (2008) suggest that the learner is an “intellectually generative” being capable of creating her own knowledge and theories rather than the empty vessel to be filled by the wise and fully knowledgeable instructor (p. 162).  This is the suggestion that students, perhaps as groups, may come up with meaning on their own within a Socratic Seminar, for example, rather than simply being talked at by way of a typical college lecture.

Five Pillars

Five basic principles for applying Constructivism in learning include:  (a) the maintenance of a buffer, (b) provision of a learning context, (c) an embedding of reasons for learning, (d) support of self-regulation, and (e) strengthening of learner’s motivation to engage in learning (Driscoll, 2004[?] p. 407).  A sample context would include an electrician apprenticeship where the journeyman electrician would assume responsibility for the work thereby buffering the apprentice learner while encouraging him to trust his judgement (supporting self-regulation).  The journeyman supplies the job sites (context) at which train his apprentice and pays him a nominal rate with a graduate payscale as he improves (embedding reasons for learning and strengthen tendency to engage).   

Strengths in Application

A major strength in the application of Constructivism is the learners are participants and are actively/inter-actively taking part in the thing that is to be learned (such as composing music, driving a car, engaging in entrepreneurism) rather than the typical passive learner in traditional lecture oriented teaching.  For example, students are far more likely to be enthusiastic about being a software designer rather than simply consuming.

Students are also likely to become more autonomous thinkers when the decision rest with them and they are self-regulatory.  Compare the MBA who learns how to analyze business from a decontextualized business school to the the no-school business owner who has learned by trial and error.

Weaknesses in Application

A major weakness in the application of Constructivism is the suggestion of self-guided learning.  It is perhaps intuitive and has been shown that, often, learners are not good judges of what material they might learn best from nor what they should learn.  While surfing the Web might be a self-guided learning activity for young computer lab students, for example, it is questionable that the students will be able to accurately assess valuable forms of knowledge, much less direct themselves on constructive paths to that knowledge.  Also, teacher-centered approaches were shown to be more effective at producing academic achievement than student centered approaches.

Constructivist Lesson Example and Project Example

At a vocational school in Saudi Arabia, I used constructivism and students’ intimacy with their mobile devices to motivate disengaged students to create projects that documented and demonstrated both their English skills and their knowledge of industrial safety principles.  I asked students to use their tablets, mobiles, or the school’s PCs to create the project.  I set no standard, other than that the English must be understandable, safety procedures must be clear, and it be within the context of the vocational environment.  Students worked in self-designated groups with self-regulating standards (emerging from the competition among groups) choosing whatever media they would like (audio, video, image, posters, etc.).  A YouTube link demonstrating a fine group project submission follows:  Abdullah and Adam Demonstrate Troubleshooting

Motivation Wiki

Definition of Motivation

Schunk defines motivation in learning as the “process of instigating and sustaining goal-directed behavior” (2008, p. 346).  In addition, Hull (1943) suggests motivation is the “initiation of learned, or habitual, patterns of movement or behavior” (p. 226).

Incentive Guidelines for Extrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic motivation means engaging in tasks for rewards other than the process itself, including:  objects, grades, praise or transferring abilities.  It’s not good to reward extrinsically for behavior that are intrinsically motivated.  It could undermine and become counter-productive to intrinsic motivation.  Some guidelines include the immediacy of the reward, that it is often and unpredictable, and that it is not overdone.  

Expectancy-value Theory of Motivation and Example

The Expectancy-value Theory of Motivation discovered by Atkinson suggests that individuals are motivated based on the product of several competing variables.  An individual will be motivated to engage in before if they expect a certain outcome and they value that attribute.  If the value that attribute yet don’t expect the outcome, they will likely not be motivated to pursue it.  Many people highly value the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, yet because they cannot really visualize that happening they often fail before they proceed down that path i.e., the become demotivated and take no action (Schunk, p. 359-61).

Add the equation

Role of Anxiety in Motivation

“Anxiety in mastery situations” may be caused by previous failures.  Anxiety may also come from a “[p]erceived lack of competence” or “[e]xternal perception of control” (Schunk, p. 387).  Both of these influences would decrease a student’s effectance motivation.

Goals Four dimensions Defined & Examples

The four dimension of goal theory include specificity, difficulty, proximity, and orientations of performance or learning (Schunk 375-6).  Learning goals deal with the acquisition of knowledge, behavior or skill.  Whereas, performance goals are informed by the tasks which are to be completed.  Optimal goals would be more specific though not too difficult to reduce one’s self-efficacy.  Very distal goals might be set on an objective so aloof that feelings of lack of ability to reach decrease one’s motivation to pursue them.  

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy  regarding goal setting behavior refers to a subjects evaluation of their own abilities.  A subject with high self-efficacy has the perceived belief that their efforts will succeed.  Consequently, that individual would be motivated to engage in even difficult tasks because of the belief (whether or not actually validated by past outcomes) that they will do well (Schunk, p. 372).

Motivation Attributes

The Theory of Attributes describes how a subject perceives the outcomes of her behavior and what forces influence the manifestation of those outcomes.  Attribute refers to perceived causes.  There appears to be a balance (or imbalance) in a person’s view of his ability to influence his own outcomes.  Some have an internal locus of control meaning they see their inputs as influential on outcomes and events (Schunk, p. 366-9).  Others experience a external locus of control, and project the causes of outcomes onto persons, things, or events in their environment over which they have no influence.  Also, internal refers to a causal mechanism within the individual, such as ability or effort.  Where, external refers to things outside the individual, such as the difficulty of the problem or a biased teacher.  Ability could be described as internal (comes from within you), stable (you have it always) and uncontrollable (you didn’t determine whether or not you had it) in Wiener’s model.  Whereas, luck (whatever “it” is) is definitely external (rather ethereal and ephemeral), unstable (who knows when it will happen) and uncontrollable (who knows how it will happen).

“Do and Don’t List” for Educators to increase motivation

Do	Don’t
Praise effort, process Mention that another student succeeded Mention that you like what another student is doing well Emphasize approach mastery goals Encourage control of situation Encourage incremental, growth mindset	Praise ability, intelligence Mention that another student failed Do it too much Emphasize avoidance goals Emphasize the global Mention entity, fixed mindset

Relationship:  Praise and Motivation

Praise must be measured and specifically place on the incremental abilities and emphasize the growth mindset.  Motivation can be increased by praising a job well done or that the student is working hard/putting forth great effort to achieve the goal.  If emphasis of praise is placed on fixed traits, such as intelligence, students may develop an entity mindset and lack motivation when they fail.

Relationship:  Metacognition and Motivation

Perhaps students are motivated by behavioral rewards.  Deci suggests that students rewarded for their performance will not replicate.  Creatives were judged to be less so following rewarded behavior (Deci, p. 76).  So, there must be an awareness of increased performance, driven and reinforced from within the individual, to reinforce motivation.  

Strongest Motivational Influences and Example

Incremental theory which is described functionally as the growth mindset, in Carol Dweck’s later writings, should have a great impact on educators.  Praise should be made to a student’s effort and the learning processes.  Rather than saying that a student is “a good student” or that they are “sooo smart” or “a great artist,” a teacher might praise the student’s improvement from an A grade to an A+ as proof that hard work really pays off.  An art teacher might suggest to a young artist that they are really developing their artistic sensitivities and that if they keep it up, before long they’ll become a true virtuoso.

Strongest Competing Motivational Influences and Example

Learned helplessness is surely one of the most negative of influences.  It’s quite important to remedy the passivity that would be instilled in a student who, after a continual and repeated experiences, had the feeling as though they were not in control of their forward progress.  Self concept would have to be improved by bolstering the child’s self-efficacy with repeated praise of effort.  Also, a fixed mindset proceeding from an entity theory of life may paralyze teenagers moving from the perspective of “a big fish in a little pond,” an academic star at their small town high school, to a very small fish indeed at an Ivy League school.  Failure at a more difficult assignment than they were used to might convince this student that she is “not smart, after all.”  

Example Lesson with Motivational Principles

I used comparative ideas and competition among peers at the vocational school in Saudi.  In creating the video of projects, I would often prompt students that, “Surely you can do better than students last year,” and “Just look how far you all have come in the last year.”  As the environment was a quite “masculine” (all male campus in a male-dominated culture), praise was rare and you certainly did not tell a young man that he was a “good” anything.  We encouraged them to move farther than they had in the past and to continually improve.

My Theory of Learning Data Collection - Interview with German Language Learner

Here's a first sample of my interviewing language learners & how the best learn - immersed or in-class.

Learning German in Germany - Teresa Buchanan

Discussion of Cognitive Development: Piaget and Bruner

Dr. Lauren Barth-Cohen

One classic research topic in the development of young children's thinking in science is the shape of the earth.  Based on everyday observations it is understandable that one may assume that the world is flat, and many have noted the historical parallel's between young children assumptions of the world being flat and the history of science.  However, upon being told that the world is round, many have noted that young children sometimes then presume that the earth is a flat disk inside a hollow sphere. Based on your reading of this weeks chapters, describe these results in light of Piaget and Bruner's work.  How might you apply these ideas to the design of instruction for the shape of the earth?

The "metaphor of conceptual change as a scientific paradigm shift" put forth by Posner aptly characterizes this childish misconception.  Stretching the analogy a bit, you might look at the evolution of knowledge in the Western world as the Piagetian process of childhood maturation into teen - moving from the pre-operational Pre-Socratic times (& then later re-booted with the Dark Ages) through the concrete operational stage & Golden Age of Greece into the formal operational & European Renaissance & later Enlightenment.

As a whole, general human community, we believed that the Earth was a flat disc at one time.  And, of course, it took no less than a dramatic & painful paradigm shift in Europe to grow past the primitive concept that our plane of existence was not flat but indeed a revolving & orbiting sphere. Children, just as humanity, view the world in the simplest possible manner - very Aristotelian in a way. Young children have not moved into the stage of viewing knowledge of the physical world in the mental, imaginative, constructivist models.  

I agree completely with Bruner that children have a far greater capacity to assimilate knowledge & accommodate the new intellectual "paradigms" they are confronted with as they flow through formal education & their dynamic cognitive development.  

As Bruner suggests, instruction (especially around the idea of physics) optimizes discovery when children are taught:

• How to cut their losses (divest regardless of their stubborn hold to a crumbling foundation)
• Pose good testable results (scientific method & experimentation)
• Persist in seeking appropriate evidence (determination can be a useful ally when bent correctly), &
• Be concise (for, after all, simplicity & brevity are infinitely appealing) 

Having many nephews & nieces (& being a very eager Uncle-babysitter), I have found that guiding kids through Socratic discussions with accompanying physical models to demonstrate phases of the moon & eclipses can be brilliant fun.  I treat these little adventurers as equals & apt discoverers of knowledge - veritable Christopher Columbuses.  The ensuing discovery of knowledge & seeing that light bulb moment sparkle in a child's eye is one of life's necessary, raison d'etre moments for anyone worthy of being called a teacher.

Operant Conditioning a la Big Bang Theory

Discussion of Information Processing Theory

Dr. Lauren Barth-Cohen

Foundational to the information processing approach to learning is the "human as computer" metaphor.  That is, the human mind is like a computer or information processor.  Information is gathered from the external world through the senses (input), it is stored, processed, and combined with previously stored information in the mind, and then there is a resulting behavioral response (output).  Describe an example from your experiences as an Educator where this learning theory applies.  What insights does this approach offer? What are some limits of this approach?

Having never studied education before becoming a teacher, I am very pleased to read that many of the concepts that we use (seemingly intuitive to the teaching profession) have been studied & labeled.  It's like hearing a song or reading a passage in a novel & saying, "Yep - I know exactly how that feels," or "I knew I wasn't the only one who thought that was a good idea."

Perhaps it was my prior experience in the military that prompted me to use selective attention concepts to muster the rapt attention of students, recently in Saudi Arabia.  I'd always group my classes of 20-30 students into 4-5 student teams at the beginning of a semester.  I'd have each team select a name (soccer favorites, Marvel characters or, unfailingly, something plus “Ninja”) & create a motto for them to shout out when their team was victorious with a gamified & competitive class exercise.  They would often add hand-clapping & song-like intonation to their respective team mottos.  Motivated rehearsal is remarkable for creating a conducive learning environment.  If I needed to get a certain group's attention (or perhaps the whole class), I could simply begin one of their team chants.  Four men barking out the rest of the motto would usually bring the class to order, ironically creating a behaviorist-like response in the classroom & preparing them for the next order - bringing them to attention (they were soldiers, after all).

Teacher’s expectations & the projection of them onto students has always been sort of a secret weapon of mine.  I am incredibly enthusiastic &, perhaps, overly-optimistic - starry-eyed, rose-colored glasses, even.  As an instructor in Saudi, I heard many complaints by fellow teachers that these were the very worst students they had ever encountered.  Perhaps these young men were very relaxed & less engaged (lazy & unmotivated in the words of my poopy-pants colleagues).  I felt that motivation was my job, as the high-paid foreign consultant - get these Saudi boys fired-up.  After some experimenting & tweaking & massaging this particular technique, I would remind each class I was assigned - at that point in time - that THEY were the best group I ever had - even if I was assigned three different classes that semester.  You’d think it would get old for them to hear it so often.  Flattery never gets old to young Arab men.  Yet, eventually, they each became it.

We also used self-questioning in order to give greater meaning to concepts & better encode the information realized from the questions.  We did this using the “OK Google” feature of the Google’s search app.  Yes, they would be asking the question to “Google” but I believe that when Google is asked aloud, we are also asking ourselves.  The female voice of the response from Google, or Apple’s Siri, was particular helpful & enabled encoding of information for these grown boys in the Saudi desert.  It is my belief, that because they rarely hear the female voice, anything heard in a that lovely tone would become particularly more relevant to their mind.

The combination of selective attention, team “roars,” fun-focused exercises, student-centered lessons  & high expectations gave me very motivated students.  I consistently had higher-scoring classes because, I believe, I primed their mental computers for smooth functioning by continually rebooting their operating systems.

As a fascinating aside, I was considering my extreme desire to teach like my hair is on fire.  This required, sometimes, near superhuman efforts with young Saudi males who had very little motivation for learning English (which they most likely never use) & higher education at all.   Because of my desire to capture their attention & see sincere engagement, I found my lesson directed, from the lesson plan lead-in, toward entertaining these young men & to sneak in education where I could.

Now, there are certainly limits to my approach.  I am always keen to admit that what I did in Saudi Arabia & China would not necessarily work here in the States - or be allowed.  I was given so much liberty in the classroom - as a US “expert” consultant (hey, that’s what my visa said!) - that I could experiment with different tactics.  What’s more, I had each group of Saudi men for only three-four months.  I’m not sure if the maintenance of motivation would be possible within in a longer term & less flexible state-mandated framework.

Discussion of Situated Cognition

Dr. Lauren Barth-Cohen

The authors we've read this week, Brown, Collins and Duguid and Lave, describe a particular kind of educational setting.  Some might dismiss their views on Situated Cognition and Apprenticeships as impractical or unrealistic when thinking about contemporary schools and educational challenges.  For our discussion this week, consider educational environments you've experienced, as a student or teacher where situation cognition might be applicable. What was being learned? What counted as "knowing"? What was the role of the teacher? 

In reference to what indeed a theory of learning is or should be & what are its tenets, Lave nails it when she states that:

     "The term "learning mechanism" diminishes in importance, in fact it may fall out altogether, as "mechanisms" disappear into practice.  Mainly, people are becoming kinds of persons." (p 157, my emphasis)

Of course, yes?!  Master tailors create master tailors.  Islamic legal scholars mold future Muslim lawyers.  

So then, what is school, formal education creating?  I suppose for those who embrace what it is, it is creating good teachers & good students.  Rather tautological albeit achieving & justifying its continued existence, non?!  Our forum is a brilliant example of this truism.

I'll tell you what's not so brilliant.  I studied business for my first Masters.  None of the professors, although esteemed in the community as consultants & generally nice folks, had founded, been continuously associated or significantly contributed any successful business.  Voila!  I mastered the Masters of Business Administration, graduating with honors.  I have yet to master business, some eleven years later - indeed, my many ventures have been startling failures (failure is fertilizer, yes)! ;)

What was being taught at me was the ability to analyze - in a very decontextualized atmosphere - business formation, management & it's relationship to society.  Yes, we had projects that were sort of real-worldy.  Did we engage in entrepreneurship?  That's just silly.  Who would back a bunch of apprentice MBAs?  Many of my colleagues went on to executive positions in random corporations around California.  I'm curious if they've been able to contribute much to their respective business employers from what they "learned" about business in business school.  Did we learn about business in business school?  Nope. We learned how to study business in business school.

Our deferred apprenticeships in the practice of business only began after the thick degree - albeit bereft of a true master.  Curious.

"Knowing" about business in business school is declarative with a big D!  Absolutely nothing procedural or truly metastrategic to it.  We "knew" how to analyze business.

The role of the teacher . . . I'm really not negative about the whole experience.  I "learned" a lot.  I did not "learn" how to create a business - sometimes I think it was actually counter-productive to entrepreneurship.  The role of the professors at that lovely school on the Lost Coast of California was to create certified MBAs.  Which they did.  Bravo.