Motivation of Students

It seems to me that motivation of students is one of the most important aspects of education yet also one of the most difficult to accomplish. Without motivation, students will not learn, and therefore our teaching will not be successful, but we cannot force students to be motivated. It is something that they must choose to do. However, it is obvious that certain teaching styles foster motivation in students while others discourage it.
I read a journal article entitled, "Classroom Goal Structure, Student Motivation, and Academic Achievement," in Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2006. 57:487-503, by Meece, Anderman, and Anderman. This paper examines achievement goal theory and the influence of different achievement goals on motivation and academic achievement. I will summarize the paper below.
The paper starts by defining achievement goal theory by stating that people are more likely to engage in tasks in which they expect to succeed and that are of personal importance to them. Achievement goal theory builds on this social-cognitive view of motivation and emphasizes the demonstration of competence as a goal; "the distinguishing feature of achievement behavior is its goal of competence or perception of competence." There are two contrasting competence goals: "mastery" and "performance." Success in a mastery goal orientation is defined in terms of self-improvement and development of a new skill, with students "deriving satisfaction from the inherent qualities of the task." Performance goal orientation, on the other hand, emphasizes demonstration of higher ability in relation to others, with students' sense of accomplishment stemming from doing better than the norm or others in the class. Much research suggests that students show the most positive achievement patterns (ie effort, persistence, task involvement) when they are focused on mastery goals. In addition, evidence suggests that performance goals are associated with "surface-level learning strategies, which do not necessarily promote conceptual understanding." However, there is limited linkage between mastery goals and academic performance, and some studies suggest that performance goals are positively associated with persistence and achievement outcomes in college students. This paper noted that, in reality, individual students actually probably simultaneously seek both goals of mastery and performance.
The authors state that it is useful to study how the use of different goal structures in classrooms influence students' motivation. For example, teachers who use competitive grading practices will emphasize the performance goal system, whereas teachers who focus on skill development and improvement will naturally move students toward a mastery goal system. This paper described several different ways to determine the goal structure of a classroom. The TARGET System (Ames and Archer, 1992), uses student assessment of Task dimension, Authority dimension, Recognition dimension, Grouping dimension, Evaluation dimension, and Timing dimension in a classroom to categorize classroom goal structure. The Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey or PALS (Midgley et al, 2002), again employs a survey system, using lists of statements from which students and teachers select the most applicable to describe classroom goal structure. Finally, Meece et al (1991) and Patrick et al (2001) used a combination of survey and observational methods to assess classroom goal structure.
The authors then discuss the influence of classroom goal structure on students' personal achievement goals, stating that "classroom goal structures are generally viewed as precursors of students' personal goal orientations." It generally holds true that students' personal goal orientations reflect their perception of the classroom goal structure, even when student characteristics such as gender, ability level, etc are controlled. Thus, the perceived classroom goal structure is very important in the development of students' personal goal orientations.
The authors briefly discuss the impact of programs such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2oo1 (NCLB), which uses standardized test scores to assess progress of students and performance of teachers. This focus on testing is likely to lead to a performance goal orientation in the classroom, which research suggests may enhance motivation and achievement in older and higher-ability students. However, research suggests that elementary and middle school students may be negatively impacted by emphasis on performance goals, leading to decreased intrinsic motivation and more surface level understanding of material.
In the conclusion of the paper, the authors summarize that, in general, research indicates that younger students "adopt the most positive and adaptive approach to learning" when a mastery
goal orientation is developed in the classroom. However, there remains a lack of linkage between mastery goals and student achievement in the classroom in grades and test scores. The authors believe that this anomaly is mostly due to how academic performance is measured and think that most testing and grades do not adequately assess students' deep understanding of concepts and content.
I thought that this was an interesting paper to read because it described research which attempts to measure and describe student motivation and how it relates to teaching style. I think that this is difficult because I tend to approach this subject intuitively; I ask myself what I found motivating and attempt to emulate that. We all have had teachers who have motivated us and inspired us, and I think that this kind of research endeavors to describe exactly why these teachers were inspiring in a very descriptive way. I think that most of us would agree that the classroom environment had a large impact on our motivation, and I would agree that teachers that emphasized deeper understanding of material (mastery) and not just test performance or outperforming others (performance) inspired more motivation and desire to learn material. In addition, an important aspect for me in motivation is clear expectations - even if the goal orientation was absolutely only performance based, if I understood exactly what was expected of me and how I could attain the goal, then I was more motivated to do it than when the expectations were nebulous.
I think an important thing to bear in mind is something that the authors touch on - that it is difficult to divide this into black and white, clear divisions - most people approach learning with both the goals of mastery and performance in mind. They want to learn the material, but also recognize that they need to perform on tests, etc in order to succeed academically. In veterinary school, we used to say that "C=DVM," that is, it didn't really matter what kind of grade that you got in the class, what was important is that you understood the material, because when you got out there in practice, it didn't matter if you got an "A" in the class or not, what mattered is that you knew what to do for the sick animal. I think it is much easier to be motivated to learn things that you see as directly applicable; it can be harder to motivate students to learn things that they don't see as being germaine to them.