There is more to teaching than just knowing the content or pedagogical strategies, one must also know their students and what motivates them to engage or disengage from learning. I believe this starts with forming a bond of trust and caring with each student and then through this bond we can learn more about influencing their desires to learn. I had the opportunity to complete an in depth motivational design project of a student using Joyce Epstein’s TARGET model as the foundation. This is a summary of the motivation plan I developed for the student “Antonio.”

1. Apathetic Antonio
Rob Millett
Design Project Gallery Walk
CEP 802

2. Antonio’s Case Summary
• 7th grade male ESL student in math class
• Shuts down in class and does not attempt
tasks
• Avoids tasks outside of math class
• Is below grade level in math standardized
testing
• Does not retain skills from day to day

3. TARGET Analysis
• Task: same objectives, similar tasks, notes, practice
problems, small amount of differentiation and
inclusion of student interests
• Authority: content and activities selected by me
• Recognition: Public (anonymous) grades posted,
superficial comments on evaluated works
• Grouping: mostly teacher assigned pairs and
sometimes random groups of 4
• Evaluation: tests and quizzes with grades given for
each benchmark. Very few projects.
• Time: fast paced curriculum, 70 min classes on aveage
3 times a week

4. Motivational Problem
• Antonio attributes success and failure to a mix of
internal/external and un/controllable factors
– Attributes failure to the work being too hard
– Attributes failure to the teacher not explaining well
• Stipek’s (2002, p 67) Measure of Attributions for Performance on Academic Tasks
• Observed behavior indicates low self-efficacy
– Says work is too hard, attributing success to the work
being easy or teacher explaining well, easily discouraged,
makes excuses for not completing work, does not
volunteer answers
• Stipek, 2002, p. 92
• Displays performance (avoidance) goal orientation
– Says he is motivated only to pass math class, displays
surface processing strategies, copies/cheats
• Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, p28

5. Motivational Strategy Part 1
• Shift Antonio’s causal attributions to internal and
controllable factors
– Recognition for Antonio’s efforts and process towards the
objective rather than focusing on his abilities or intelligence
– Help him attribute “failures” to wrong strategies, lack of
information, and lack of effort when pertinent
– Remind him of his success on similar or connected tasks
• Rationale
– “Effort and persistence are greater when we attribute our
performance to internal and controllable causes rather than to
external or uncontrollable causes” (Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, p.
150)

6. Motivational Strategy Part 2
• Increase Antonio’s self-efficacy
– Provide focused feedback which will help Antonio achieve
success
– Help Antonio set challenging yet attainable goals in class
– Recognize Antonio’s progress and improvement towards specific
learning goals
• These strategies are suggested in Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, on page 145
• Rationale
– When students have low perceptions of their abilities, they
tend to try to avoid learning situations where they may fail or
give up easily when they become frustrated or are failing
(Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, p. 145)

7. Motivational Strategy Part 3
• Shift Antonio’s goal orientation from performance to
learning goal orientation
– Stop posting anonymous grades in the classroom to avoid grade
comparisons
– Make most feedback private rather than public, and when it is
public, focus the feedback on effort and strategies rather than
general “good job” statements
• (Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, p. 29)
– Introduce more corrective feedback opportunities that do not
affect the grade such as exit slips to promote a focus on learning
progress
• Stipek (2002, p. 114)

8. Motivational Strategy Part 3 cont’
• Shift Antonio’s goal orientation from performance to
learning goal orientation
– Include more authentic tasks which allow student interests to
be displayed as well as more tasks with varying difficulty choices
so that students can choose their optimal difficulty. This allows
students to stay within their motivational and cognitive ZPDs.
Teaching within these two ZPDs help students to appreciate the
learning and as well as develop a schema for learning with
understanding (Brophy & Wentzel, 2014, p 222).
• Rationale
– Students who approach achievement situations with
performance goals tend to have little interest in learning and
disengage quickly when they run into difficulties (Brophy &
Wentzel, 2014, p. 23)

9. TARGET Changes
• Task – students choosing varied difficulty paths, student
interests included in assignments
• Authority – the choice of difficulty passes authority to the
students, student centered interests rather than teacher
centered
• Recognition – more private feedback/recognition, not
posting grades, more focused on improvement rather than
performance
• Grouping – focusing on creating a learning community
rather than competition, choosing to work with partners
or alone on the authentic tasks
• Evaluation – more formative assessment with corrective
feedback
• Time – Authentic tasks/projects allow for students to
manage their own time more often, more lenient on
accepting late work when students need extra time.

10. Next Steps
• The key will be to implement these strategies
with consistency
• Commit to implementing authentic tasks rather
than easy one size fits all tasks
• Measure Antonio’s task engagement through
observation and return to edit the motivational
strategy
• Continue searching for more ways to enhance the
learning environment and learning community
within the classroom as well as continue shifting
students from performance goal orientation to
learning goal orientation.

11. References
• Brophy, J., & Wentzel, K. (2014). Motivating
students to learn (4th ed.). New York:
Routledge
• Stipek, D. (2002). Motivation to learn:
Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.).
Boston: Allyn & Bacon