Whether we are tasked with educating our very own .... or not

1. Inspiring Students’ Motivation to
Learn
Robin Pappas
Center for Teaching and Learning

2. Pre-Assessment: Habits of Mind

3. Introductions and Overview
How did the difference in your motivation impact your learning?
What made the difference in inspiring (or diminishing) your
motivation to learn?

4. Motivation
There are three things to remember about education. The first is
motivation. The second one is motivation. The third one is motivation.
(Terrel Bell, U.S. Secretary of Education, 1981-85)
One thing that is most certain about the past
as well as the future is the importance of
motivation in the practice of education.
(Maehr and Meyer, 1997)
Motivation as an outcome is important to all
students in the classroom all the time.
(Ames, 1990)

5. Motivation: Definition
Personal investment an individual has in reaching a desired state
or outcome
• Focuses on behaviors, not innate or fixed characteristics
• Attends to processes and causes
• Investment metaphor suggests all persons possess resources
• May be seen in action taken and affect expressed
Maehr and Meyer, 1997.

6. Motivation: 2 Central Concepts and Their Context
Will it work out? Can I really do it?

7. Goals

8. Performance Goals versus Learning Goals
Elliot, 1999; Elliot and McGregor, 2001; Valle et al., 2003; Ford, 1992

9. Expectancies
• Outcome Expectancies: specific actions will bring about a
desired outcome (Carver and Scheier, 1998)
• Efficacy Expectancies: one is capable of identifying, organizing,
initiating, and executing a course of action that will bring about
a desired outcome (Bandura, 1997)

10. Attributions and Expectancy
Habits of Mind pre-assessment
• Stable (but not fixed)
• Controllable (via own behaviors)
• Temporary, i.e., subject to learner behavior
Ames, 1990; Dweck and Leggett, 1988

11. Environment
Less supportive More supportive

12. Environment and Motivation
Environment is NOT
SUPPORTIVE
Environment is SUPPORTIVE
DON’T SEE
Value
SEE Value DON’T SEE
Value
SEE Value
Student’sefficacyis…
LOWHIGH
Rejecting Hopeless Rejecting Fragile
Motivate
d
EvadingDefiantEvading
Adapted from Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 2010.

13. To Establish Value
• Connect material to students’ interests
• Provide authentic, real-world tasks
• Show relevance between content and students’ current
academic lives
• Demonstrate relevance of higher-level skills to students’
professional lives
• Identify and reward what you value (syllabus, class
discussion/lecture, feedback, modeling, assessments aligned
to course objectives)
• Show your own passion and enthusiasm for the discipline

14. To Build Positive Expectancies
• Ensure alignment of learning objectives, assessments, and
instructional strategies
• Identify appropriate level of challenge
• Create assessments that provide an appropriate level of
challenge
• Provide early success opportunities
• Articulate expectations: desired learning for the course and
what students are expected to do to demonstrate that learning
• Provide rubrics
• Describe effective study strategies

15. To Build Value and Expectancy
• Provide flexibility and control
• Give students opportunities to reflect
• Attend explicitly to course climate

16. Course Climate
• Intellectual
• Social
• Emotional
• Physical
16

17. Course Climate
CentralizingMarginalizing
Explicit ExplicitImplicit Implicit
17
De Surra and Church, 1994

18. Course Climate—Content
CentralizingMarginalizing
Explicit ExplicitImplicit Implicit
18
Exclusive Curriculum Exceptional Outsider Transformed Curriculum
De Surra and Church, 1994; Marchesani and Adams, 1992

19. Establishing and Maintaining Supportive Course Climate
• Work across cultures and use examples, etc., to relate to
people from diverse backgrounds and statuses
• Establish ground rules for interaction
• Use syllabus and first day of class to set tone for climate
• Set up processes to get feedback on climate
Ambrose et al., 2010; Ames, 1990