Why is being motivated important in education?
Students are unable to learn at their own pace or have much autonomy in traditional public schools.
Students are less likely to pursue subjects that pique their interest and deeply engage them as a result of the routines.
Self-directed learning that is borne out of enjoyment of the process and passion for the subject matter is further discouraged by the grading systems utilised in the majority of schools.
Motivation in Education
We all have a natural curiosity and a desire to learn when we are born, but some people lose those abilities as they get older. Education is a crucial context that can influence our later attitudes toward the acquisition of knowledge and growth. Our individual inclinations toward the process of learning are shaped by a number of different factors.
Learning is a process that lasts a lifetime. However, in order for our children to maintain the motivation necessary for long-term success, they must find learning to be enjoyable and rewarding.
Students are encouraged to approach unfamiliar and frequently challenging circumstances with anticipation of growth and expectation of success because of their curiosity and motivation to learn. These are the forces that enable students to seek out intellectual and experiential novelty.
Students’ levels of engagement and contribution to the learning environment are indicators of their level of motivation in the educational setting.
Students who are highly motivated typically take an active and impulsive part in activities and enjoy the learning process without anticipating any external rewards (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). On the other hand, students who lack motivation to learn will frequently rely on rewards to participate in activities they may not enjoy.
Seven factors, according to Malone and Lepper (1987), drive motivation:
Many of these are present in games, but more on that later. Challenge Curiosity Control Fantasy Competition Cooperation Recognition The fundamental aspects of fostering effective learning and achievement that are the focus of current trends in educational psychology include not only cognitive development but also the students’ preferences and motivation.
Long-term productivity and well-being suffer as a result of a person’s lack of motivation, a significant obstacle to academic success that manifests itself in the form of feelings of annoyance and frustration. According to Legault, Green-Demers, & Pelletier (2006), the ability to believe in the effort, the lack of awareness of the value, and the characteristics of the academic tasks all influence the level of motivation in learning.
The following section discusses learning motivation theories related to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Motivation and Learning
When our children are motivated, they learn more effectively and retain more information. This may seem obvious, but the truth is more nuanced, and the research demonstrates that not all motivations are the same.
There are two main and distinct types of goals that are recognized in the literature on goal achievement: mastery and effectiveness Some of our children are driven to become proficient in materials and skills; Others strive for superiority over others (Dweck, 1986; (1984, Nicholls)
Although they are qualitatively distinct types of motivation, mastery goals and performance goals represent the same overall quantity of motivation.
A series of behavioral experiments was carried out by Murayama and Elliot (2011) to investigate the ways in which these two distinct types of motivation influence learning.
In their study, participants took a surprise memory test related to the task while participating in a problem-solving exercise. In the performance goal condition, participants were instructed that their objective was to demonstrate their ability in comparison to other participants, while in the mastery goal condition, participants were instructed that the objective of the task was to develop their cognitive ability.
On an immediate memory test, members in the performance goal condition performed better, but when the memory was tested a week later, those in the mastery goal condition performed better than those motivated by competition.
Murayama believed that additional testing was required despite the study’s clear findings that mastery orientation and performance goals both facilitate short-term learning.
Latent growth curve modeling was used to analyze longitudinal survey data on over 3,000 seventh-grade German children. The results showed that items that focused on the performance aspect of learning, where students said they worked hard in math to get good grades, predicted a higher immediate math achievement score.
Similarly, the growth in math achievement scores over a three-year period was predicted by items focusing on the mastery aspect of learning, where students reported investing a lot of effort in math because they were interested in the subject (Murayama, Pekrun, Lichtenfeld, & vom Hofe, 2013).
The underlying mechanisms of this time-dependent effect of motivation are currently being examined with some additional neuroimaging and behavioral experiments (Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Ikeda Murayama and others, 2013).