{"id":13049,"date":"2013-06-17T11:03:05","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T15:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=13049"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:20:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:20:50","slug":"edc-blog-the-grey-area-surrounding-student-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2013\/edc-blog-the-grey-area-surrounding-student-motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"EDC Blog: The grey area surrounding student motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Manuela Popovici<\/em><\/p>\n

The more I\u2019ve been thinking about student motivation, the further I\u2019ve moved away from the motivated\/unmotivated dichotomy. I realized that I was holding on to a belief in the \u201cright motivation\u201d and thus the only acceptable motivation, i.e. the desire to learn, because that\u2019s how I always felt about school.<\/p>\n

I would take a guess that many people who become educators have always had a desire to learn, an excitement for discovering and understanding things, so it\u2019s easy to use that as a measuring stick. In reality, very few of my classmates were as nerdy as myself in school, and yet I kept teaching as if all my students were nerds. I found out the hard way that to measure students\u2019 motivation to learn by how nerdy they are is to set them up as unmotivated, and set myself up for frustration. I was teaching the nerd and wondering why it didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Once I gave that up, I began to discern a mixed bag of motivations for why the students landed in my class. They came because they needed the credit for graduation, the course was required, the class fit in the right timeslot, they didn\u2019t know anything about the topic, they had some professional or personal experience with the topic, they were building a portfolio on the topic for the future, they had a friend who recommended the course or instructor or who dragged them there, they didn\u2019t like the other course or instructor options, and so many others reasons.<\/p>\n

Once I gave up my cherished but simplistic nerd\/unmotivated dichotomy and became open to other options, students became more open. That in turn helped me tremendously in planning my classes better. A student who takes the course because it fits in his or her schedule may eventually also get interested in the topic and learn, but much less so if I\u2019ve written her off as being unmotivated from day one.<\/p>\n

Then there is the motivation to continue coming to class and that\u2019s just as mixed. Some students come simply because they\u2019re conscientious, and those are few. A punitive attendance policy brings more students in, but what keeps them coming beyond that is a combination of reasons, including the perceived relevance of the subject matter to their life, how fast or excruciatingly slow time moves during class, how much input they get to have during class, how much they like you and your jokes, the variety or lack of variety in your teaching methods, how you listen to them, how fast you speak, the conditions on their funding package, and so on. And, though we don\u2019t talk as much about it, there\u2019s that whole world students live in outside your class, including three or four other courses, each demanding as much work, possible dependants, pets, gardens, part time jobs, full time jobs, ambitions, annoying roommates, cheating partners, seasonal depressions \u2013 in other words, life.<\/p>\n

So when we say students are not motivated to learn, what do we actually mean? Yes, it would be wonderful if students came to my class regardless of how inconvenient the time slot was or how many hours they needed to complete the readings. But even I, nerd supreme, used to arrange my schedule in course-clusters, drop courses that were too boring, and read other stuff during long-winded but required lectures. The motivated-unmotivated binary places all the responsibility on students, so let\u2019s be very sure we\u2019ve fulfilled our part of the learning bargain before we point the finger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Manuela Popovici The more I\u2019ve been thinking about student motivation, the further I\u2019ve moved away from the motivated\/unmotivated dichotomy. I realized that I was holding on to a belief in the \u201cright motivation\u201d and thus the only acceptable motivation, i.e. the desire to learn, because that\u2019s how I always felt about school. I would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142,677],"tags":[380,148],"yoast_head":"\nEDC Blog: The grey area surrounding student motivation - Teaching and Learning Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By: Manuela Popovici The more I\u2019ve been thinking about student motivation, the further I\u2019ve moved away from the motivated\/unmotivated dichotomy. 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