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
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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
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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.
