Early Childhood Education and Motivation Essay

Tags: intrinsic motivation cooperative learning instructional strategies learning

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Mr. Cardot is doing a great job using extrinsic motivation, but what would really help his students to grasp the concept of setting in stories would be to increase the use of intrinsic motivation. Increasing intrinsic motivation requires Mr. Cardot to connect with this second grade class, understanding their needs and creating lessons that are responsive to their needs to be "competent, connected, and in control," (Chapter 12, p. 451). Being competent, connected, and in control simply means that the students need to be challenged just enough. As Woolfolk puts it, "Moderate difficulty provides a challenge, but not an unreasonable one," (p. 452). Lessons that are too difficult might end up creating long-term problems in the classroom including learned helplessness and frustration.

Perhaps the lessons on setting have been over their heads, offering concepts or vocabulary that they are unfamiliar with and so are not responding. It is also possible that the stories that Mr. Cardot uses are not ones that the students can relate to, leading them to feel disconnected and disinterested in the core material. Although the second graders might be too young to create their own goal-directed behavior, Mr. Cardot could create some goals for them and link those goals to meaningful and engaging literature.

According to the text, there are four main goal orientations in learning: mastery of the material itself, performance (looking good), work-avoidance, and social goals (p. 453). As he changes his instructional strategies in the class, Mr.

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Cardot will start to recognize differences between the students. Not all will have the same goals. Some will be motivated to master the content itself. Others will just want that sticker and to receive praise from the teacher or peers. Others will do as little work as they can to get by, and still others will say whatever will make their friends laugh or respond favorably. Although these difference may be personality-driven, there are things that Mr. Cardot can do to make his classroom and his pedagogical methods more mastery-oriented, which is ideal for learning (p. 455).

Before chastising the students for their lack of understanding of story setting or becoming frustrated, Mr. Cardot should praise the students for their mastery of other elements. Building on those other elements will help construct a bridge between what the students have already learned to what they need to learn. Also, the students need to feel some positive motivation while also being sufficiently challenged to do better. Woolfolk suggests framing feedback in ways that increase intrinsic motivation. Framing for intrinsic motivation means making the material meaningful as well as the lessons themselves. Creating a group lesson in which the students can design their own story settings and share with classmates would be one way that Mr. Cardot could create….....

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References

Woolfolk, A. (n..d). Educational Psychology. Digital Edition

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