Teaching Methods Effective at Fostering Positive Motivation Patterns

(Maehr and Midgley. "Enhancing Student Motivation: A schoolwide Approach", pg. 402.)

(Ames. "Classrooms: Goals, Structures, and Student Motivation", pg. 266, 267.)

We know that schools improve one at a time, and that no school in America will improve unless its teachers want to improve, and its students want to learn. The Ames effort focuses on this and is split into four key elements consisting of:

A focus on goals as a primary antecedent of motivation.
A blief that the psychological environment of the classroom determines qualitative differences in the goals adopted by students.
The identification of key dimensions in the classroom that are associated with the development of goal stresses.
A systematic attempt to translate these essentially theoretical propositions into concrete strategies for organizing and managing classroom activities.

It is common to see teachers who are able to design effective tasks that can be challenging to students but also push them in the right direction, as well as teachers who "use evaluation practices that encourage social comparison. In other words, if the task structure is mastery oriented but the evaluation structure is performance oriented."

Specification of Classroom Processes

The two main goal theory approaches that Ames and Archer discuss and work with are 'ability-focused' goals and 'task-focused' goals, which are equivalent to 'Performance-Avoidance/Approach Goal' and 'Mastery Goal'

When children adopt an ability focus, they are concerned with being judged by their peers and are seen as students trying to outperform others or achieve success even when the task is easy. Evidence suggests that a focus on ability is more likely to develop when students have limited choices regarding tasks, when there is an emphasis on competition and social comparisons, when ability grouping and tracking are implemented, when public evaluations of performance and conduct are frequent, and when grading is based on relative ability.
In contrast, when children are task-focused, the goal of learning is to gain understanding, insight, or skill and to accomplish something that is challenging. A task-focused approach is likely to develop when children have the opportunity to be involved in decision-making, peer interaction, and cooperation.

Ms. Wormwood's Classroom Methods through the lens of Goal Theory

Ms. Wormwood's teaching, as clearly evidenced in this comic excerpt, clearly does not motivate Calvin. Calvin has no intention of approaching a performance of his knowledge of the subject Ms. Wormwood, and doesn't have any kind of drive to learn the knowledge for the sake of learning. He is actively showing disinterest, in a way that lets him blame his lack of knowledge on his lack of caring, an example of performance avoidant patterns.

Improvements Ms. Wormwood can make

A few options Ms. Wormwood could follow up on in order to encourage different goal patterns are:

To help Calvin with his avoidant and self handicapping behaviors, Ms. Wormwood could incorporate more opportunities for individuality and choice in school projects.

-This was shown to work in the Ames and Archer study, in which they studies the effects of Performance Approach mindsets when students are working on projects that they are passionate about.

The study concluded that even when they received external pressures such as social comparison and grades, they were were less likely to be negatively effected because they were actually passionate about their projects.

Create a positive classroom environment that encourages students to share ideas and display knowledge, like positively reinforcing answering questions and group discussions. This could foster Performance Approach patterns!
Find ways to engage students in the content, by applying it to concepts students are already interested in, like dinosaurs. In the comic below Calvin would rather focus on dinosaurs than geography, but by combining the two (such as referencing where dinosaurs lived historically and the modern location, or T-rexes eating smaller dinosaurs for subtraction) Ms. Wormwood could promote Mastery Goals in students by engaging them with topics of interest in an educational way on other classroom topics.
Allowing students to demonstrate understanding of a topic for science/literature/history projects in their own chosen form of presentation>>>Calvin could make informational comics

Calvin would flourish if he could apply the creativity he pours into his comics/self directed learning into the projects he does at school.

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