FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING

SUBJECT CODE: MS 111

LESSON 1: Motivation
WEEK: Week 12
SUB-TOPIC/S: Motivation and its types
Theories on Factors Affective Motivation
Students’ Diversity in Motivation

OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC

One of the most difficult tasks for any educator is learning how to motivate and engage the
learners with whom we interact. It has been widely accepted that learners who are motivated are
actively involved in the teaching and learning process, retain information more efficiently, relate
new information to previous information, and ask questions while interacting with new
information (Schunk, 2012).
This module will help you identify the different types of motivation and some theories on
the sources of motivation. This will also help you understand the two principles on the social and
cultural influences on motivation.

Students are expected to demonstrate understanding of motivation, types, theories and student
diversity in motivation for effective learner-centered learning.

At the end of this module, learners can:

∙ Distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
∙ Identify the different theories on factors affecting motivation
∙ Understand how student diversity influence student motivation.
 ∙ How motivated are you? Click the link to answer the self-motivation test.
https://tinyurl.com/z2rams7e

∙ After interpreting your score, do you agree with your score? What message did you get
from those items where you scored low?
∙ When can you say that a student is highly motivated to learn? What are indicators of
student’s level of motivation?

Motivation
Motivation is an inner drive that causes you to do something and persevere. It is the strength of
the drive toward an action. It describes the processes that accounts for an individual’s initiation,
direction, intensity and persistence of behavior. Motivation makes one move toward a goal and
sustain it. It is thus important to consider students’ motivation as factor to learning.

Types of Motivation
Intrinsic
It is intrinsic when the source of motivation is from within the person himself/herself or
the activity itself. The activity itself is satisfying and rewarding thus there is no need for
incentives or rewards. An example of intrinsic motivation would be reading a book because you
enjoy reading and have an interest in the story or subject, rather than reading because you have to
write a report on it to pass a class.

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Extrinsic
It is extrinsic when that which motivates a person is someone or something outside
him/her. It is a reward-driven behavior. In extrinsic motivation, rewards or other incentives like
praise, fame, or money are used as motivation for specific activities. An example of extrinsic
motivation is that a student is encouraged to do good work by such drives as high marks, honors,
prizes, scholarships, and privileges. He does not study for the joy of studying.

Theories on Factors affecting Motivation

1. Attribution Theory
This theory explains that we attribute our successes or failures or other events to several
factors. Suppose that you get a low mark on a test and are wondering what caused the low mark.
You can construct various explanations for—make various attributions about—this failure.
Maybe you did not study very hard; maybe the test itself was difficult; maybe you were unlucky;
maybe you just are not smart enough. Each explanation attributes the failure to a different factor.
The explanations that you settle upon may reflect the truth accurately—or then again, they may
not. What is important about attributions is that they reflect personal beliefs about the sources or
causes of success and failure. As such, they tend to affect motivation in various ways, depending
on the nature of the attribution (Weiner, 2005).

Attributions vary in three underlying ways:

a. Locus of attribution is the location of the source of success or failure. If you attribute a top mark on
a test to your ability, then the locus is internal; if you attribute the mark to the test’s having easy
questions, then the locus is external.

b. The stability of an attribution is its relative permanence. If you attribute the mark to your ability,
then the source of success is relatively stable—by definition, ability is a relatively lasting quality.
If you attribute a top mark to the effort you put into studying, then the source of success is
unstable—effort can vary and has to be renewed on each occasion or else it disappears.

c. The controllability of attribution is the extent to which the individual can influence it. If you
attribute a top mark to your effort at studying, then the source of success is relatively
controllable— you can influence effort simply by deciding how much to study. But if you attribute
the mark to simple luck, then the source of the success is uncontrollable—there is nothing that
can influence random chance.

2. Self-efficacy Theory
Self-efficacy is the belief that you are capable of carrying out a specific task or of reaching

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a specific goal. Note that the belief and the action or goal are specific. When your students believe
that they have the ability to perform learning activities successfully, they are most likely to be
intrinsically motivated to do such learnings activities. The secret therefore, to enhancing intrinsic
motivation is enhancing our students’ sense of self efficacy.

Self-efficacy–enhancing Strategies Identified by Social Cognitive Theories

a. Make more students master the basic skills.
b. Help them make noticeable progress on difficult tasks.
c. Communicate confidence in students’ abilities through words and actions.
d. Expose them to successful peers.

3. Self-determination and self-regulation theory

Self-determination theory suggests that people are motivated to grow and change by three
innate and universal psychological needs. This theory suggests that people are able to become self
determined when their needs for competence, connection, and autonomy are fulfilled.

How does self-regulation relate to motivation?

Students who are motivated to reach a certain goal will engage in self-regulatory
activities they feel will help them achieve that goal. The self-regulation promotes learning, which
leads to a perception of greater competence, which sustains motivation toward the goal and to
future goals.

Processes Involved in Self-Regulated Learning

∙ Goal Setting
∙ Planning
∙ Attention control
∙ Application of learning strategies
∙ Self-monitoring
∙ Self-evaluation

Here are some suggestions from motivation theorists to enhance students’ sense of self
determination about school activities and assignments.
∙ Present rules and instructions in an informational manner rather than controlling manner. ∙
Provide opportunities for students to make choices.
∙ Evaluate student performance in a non-controlling fashion.

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 4. Choice theory
The choice theory is a biological theory that suggest that we are born with specifics needs
that we are genetically instructed to satisfy. All our behavior represent our best attempt at any
moment to satisfy our basic needs or genetic instructions. In addition to the physical need for
survival, we have four basic psychological needs that must be satisfied to be emotionally healthy:
belonging or connecting, power or competence, freedom, and fun. (Sullo, 2007)
What do these imply to our task to facilitate learning? We need to come up with a need
satisfying environment. How can these be done? If we create a sense of community in the
classroom and make every student feel s/he belongs to that classroom community, s/he will more
likely love go to school.

5. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of
motivation
which states that five categories of human needs
dictate an
individual's behavior. Those needs are physiological needs,
safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs,
and self-actualization needs. This order begins with
the most basic needs before moving on to more
advanced needs. When all levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are met, students show their
full ability and eagerness for learning. The higher up in the hierarchy a student is, the better the
motivation and therefore the student will experience more effective learning.

6. Goal Theory
Goal theory is an overall approach to motivation that emphasizes the need to establish
goals as intrinsic motivation.

Learning Goals versus performance goals. The goals we set for ourselves affect our
level of motivation. A learning goal is a “desire to acquire additional knowledge or
master new skills” while performance goal a “desire to look good and receive favorable
judgements from others or else look bad and receive unfavorable judgements.”(Ormrod,
2004)

Self-determined goals. Personally-relevant and self-determined goals enhance a student’s

motivation. When lesson objectives are relevant to the life of students, then they turn out
to be more motivated to learn. When the lesson objectives are owned by the students
because they find them relevant to their life, most likely they become highly motivated to
 learn.

Goal setting. As a motivational tool, goal setting is effective when major elements are
present:
∙ Goal acceptance
∙ Specificity
∙ Challenge
∙ Performance monitoring
∙ Performance feedback

Students’ Diversity in Motivation

Student who, by themselves are already as diverse, also differ in motivation. This
Diversity in motivation may be traced to differences in age, developmental stage , gender ,
socio-economic and cultural background . Our class is a conglomerate of students with varying
ages, and gender and most especially cultural background and socioeconomic status. Our
students’ motivational drives reflect the elements of the culture in which they grow up – their
family, their friends, school, church, and books. To motivate all of them for learning, it is best to
employ differentiated approaches. “Different folks, different strokes”. What is medicine for one
may be poison for another.
Two principles to consider regarding social and cultural influences on motivation are: 1.
Students are most likely to model the behaviors they believe are relevant to their situation. 2.
Students develop greater efficacy for a task when they see others like themselves performing the
task successfully. (Ormrod, 2004)

∙ Why do people tend to attribute their successes to internal causes and their failures to
external causes?
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DIRECTIONS: In this, you will be asked to answer different sets of questions which is a
combination of different types of objective examination (multiple choices, identification, short
response, true or false or alike, and so on.

Brawner, D. G.,Ed.D. (2018) Facilitating Learner-Centered Teaching. Adriana

Publishing Co., Inc.

Lucas, M. D., & Corpuz, B. B. (2018). Facilitating Learner-Centered Teaching (5th ed.).
Lori Mar Publishing.
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