Essay on Motivation

The role of motivation in the classroom can be argued out between two aspects; 'Take care of learning, and motivation will take care of itself' and 'Take care of motivation, and learning will take care of itself' (How People Learn, 2000). I support the argument that when motivation is taken care of, learning will take care of itself. As much as a learning environment consists of various students with different needs, a boost in confidence can go a long way into gaining knowledge. The discussion is going to highlight three the theories of motivation and how they affect learning within a particular content area as well as a developmental group. Theories of Motivation The attribution theory of motivation involves our response in case something goes wrong.

Self-efficacy is on occasions confused with self-esteem, yet they are entirely different. For instance, self-esteem would aim to answer the question, ‘How good are you at science?' Self-efficacy, on the other hand, would be more concerned with, ‘How certain are you that you will get an A on this science entry exam?' Self-efficacy can be broken down into monitoring one's self, academic achievements, self-evaluation, and successful learning strategies. A primary example of self-efficacy is when provided with a task; a person looks at it keenly in an attempt to figure out if it meets their need to feel in control and competent. Individuals are more inclined to take up tasks that they are more likely to excel and put off those that they are not guaranteed to produce good if not outstanding results (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2012).

The self-determination theory focuses on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Turturean, 2014). Students often complain that they are unable to excel at a skill, subject or task because it is too hard for them. Teachers can use the attribute theory by pointing out to the students that the reasons they are having trouble excelling are due to factors within their control, rather than those due to the nature of the task, subject or skill. Internal attribution would serve to improve study habits of a student to a more systematic approach to revision. The attribute theory highlights that showing the students ways that they can better their areas of weakness will trigger a cognitive dissonance and eventually impact on their attitude. Teachers can gain maximumly from this approach by bringing to focus athletes that the students admire.

Self-efficacy can be implemented in learning in some ways. Students should be prepared before being assigned tasks that they are likely to deem as challenging. The preparations would be mental and emotional as well to give them the confidence to take up the task they believe is strongly beyond their levels of competence. Language instructors, for instance, could implement this form of motivation when advancing student listening comprehension skills. Students in the language class can be exposed to new vocabulary and other language challenges that would be contained in the future recording. They should portray a sense of independence (Schiefele, 2017). There is a form of success that manifests itself whereby students accomplish tasks that they assumed was too difficult or even hard enough to pause a challenge and yet within the scope of their capabilities.

The success in these areas is termed as effectance, an essential factor that leads to the intrinsic motivation creation. A mistake that teachers make in an attempt to develop effectance is providing students with simple work to achieve easy wins. Students will realize when their teachers are trying to fool them with an easy task. To gain maximumly from these forms of motivation, a set guideline should be followed; To get the full effect of intrinsic motivation, teachers should structure their lessons in such a way that they experience effectance on a regular basis (Schiefele, 2017). The students with external PLOC will benefit more from extrinsic motivation when praise is used to validate their efforts. Care should be taken when praising students so that it is not overdone, because students may feel like they are being bribed with praises.