This document discusses several theories related to motivation, assessment, and the construction of subjects. It examines attribution theory and how people attribute causes to outcomes. It also explores Foucault's ideas of archeological and genealogical thinking. Finally, it analyzes texts and interviews with children to understand how metaphors shape their views of ability, effort, and the construction of themselves as subjects.

2. Objectives
Education
Assessment
Psychology
Motivation /
motivational
Theory
Formative
Assessment
(Assessment
Reform
Group,
1999)
Attribution
theory
(Weiner,
1979, 1994)

3. Archeological and Genealogical
Thinking - Foucault
 Archeological thinking used as an approach to writing
history relating to present condition. (michel-foucault.com)
 Genealogical thinking is a critical thinking skills for
analyzing the relationship between knowledge, power,
and the human subject in modern society and the
conceptual tools to understand how their being has been
shaped by historical forces. (Foucault, 1988)

5. Attribution Theory – Weiner’s
3 causal dimensions:
 Locus of control
i. Internal (ability and effort)
ii. External (task difficulty and task)
 Stability
i. Stable (ability-internal)
ii. Unstable (effort –internal)
 Controllability
i. Able to control (skill/efficacy)
ii. Unable to control (aptitude, mood, others’ actions
and luck)

6. Critical Approach
Discourse
macro-sense as ‘ideology’ to indicate particular
ways of constructing life, the individual, know-
ledge, and power. See more the ‘subject’ as a
messenger of feeling or perception. (not taken
for granted)
Text
micro-sense to refer to the specific materiality,
the product of particular discourses (Kress, 1985).

7. Concept of Intertextuality
Text/discourse is used as a presupposition of denoting
relationship between motivational and educational
assessment discourses and to see other meaning
implies. (Holmes, 1998)
Textual elements encompass wording, modality and
rhetoric; are regarded as students’ way to create truth
claims, as well as features, particularly metaphor, for
their role in constructing the subject (Fairclough, 1992)

8. Theoretical Frame works
1. Theory of Metaphor
“Metaphors may be said to bring cultural and ideological
associations into discourse which affect thinking and practice to
generate meanings… (Norris, 1998, p.141)
2. Stimulus – Response (SR)
metaphors used to build scientific theories
of human action should be consonant with
one’s conceptions of scientific conduct itself…
(Gergen, 1990, p.267)

9. Metaphor and the Construction of the Subject
 SR metaphor: society to form response (Gergen, 1990)
 Metaphors view to absorb SR understanding with
contemporary behaviorism and cognition and be a response
(McReynolds, 1990; Harre &Van Langenhove, 1999)
  (internal realm of operations and computations
hypotheses) + class room as “black box” = response (Harre &
Gillett; Black, 1994 & William, 1998)
 Cognition = mental process; (1) ‘a cycle of relfecting and then
reproducing the world’ (2) as a creator, imposing its categories
on whatever it encounters (its world).

10. Metaphor and the Construction of the Subject
The theory of metaphor suggests that the way a particular
domain of experience is metaphorised, is one of the stakes
in the power struggle within and over discourse practices
(Fairclough, 1992, p. 193).
The identification of S-R ideology through metaphorical
usage is important in probing that power struggle in
present educational assessment discourse and the different
constructions of the individual/subject that are at stake.

11. Metaphor, Motivation and the Subject
 person as agent
Locus of control – a spatial metaphor:
1. Internal (person as agent)
2. External control (person as pawn, controlled by
others)
 Mechanistic model: certain internal conditions or
states drive the individual into given behavioral
channels; these are seen as arising necessarily and
mechanically within the individual as a response to
external regulatory stimuli.

12. Verbal Assessment in Formative Assessment
 Text A (149 children in four age group 5-6; 7-8; 10-11; 13-14) –
the child understanding of the causes of academic success
and failure: a case study of British schoolchildren.
Let’s think about two children who are working on their reading
books. One child has finished 6 reading books and the other child
has finished 4. What could be the reason for this? Can you think of
any other reasons?
Responses:
1. Performance ability (He does nice writing; He is good at reading)
2. Specific competence (She knows how to do …)
3. General competence (He is intelligent; He is clever)
- Behaviour (he mucks about)
- Age (She is older than the other one)
- Facilities (He reads thinner books)

13.  Text B (49 children aged 6-7 years old) – Effort, ability and the
teacher: young children’s explanation for success and failure.
Let’s think about another two children who are doing their
number work. One child has finished lots of different
maths sheets and activities. Can you think of the reason
why one child has done so much maths or number work
and the other child has done less? Can you think of any
other reasons?
Responses
1. Effort and specific competence(ability) as sociocultural factors
(Teacher’s feedback; parents’ exhortations “be a good boy”; “try
hard”

14.  Text C (49 children aged 6-7 years old) – children’s
discursive position on success and failure in the
social context of an interview: a new interpretation
Let’s think about another two children who are doing
painting. One child has painted a very nice painting. The
other child has painted not such a nice painting. Can you
think of the reasons why one child has done a very nice
painting and the other child has done not such a nice
painting? Can you think of any other reasons?

15.  Self-positioning:
“I am the second best writer, no one else can get on with
their work as me. I’m on the highest number book in the
class. I always have to help them… they say to me, Darren
can you help me?, they’re so lazy. But, it’s good to help
them.”
other children positioned them as vicitims
“I can’t really get on with my work because there are two
people on my table who keep on having a row.”

16.  Positioning as teacher, classifier
“because he was listening”; “because they are slowcoaches”;
“because they stand still”
 Positioning other children
“the one’s who’s reading the most has got short books and the
who’s reading the less has got chapter books”
“because one one’s got a fat brush and one’s got a thin one. The
fat one takes up most of the page, and the think one takes up
less paint …” (Task difficulty/specific competence)

17.  Positioning teachers
“they like getting stickers”
“they don’t like Mr. X getting cross with them”
“Because my teacher says something as instruction – look
at things if we’re painting to draw it very nicely; to look at
flowers, don’t look nowhere else”
“Miss sometimes says two groups are going to do their
number sheet and the others might do painting-so the
others would have done more (number work) while the
rest were painting.”