EFFECTIVE FACTORS IN LEARNING

Motivation - Basic Human Needs

Competence Drive Anxiety And Its Effects,
Classroom Motivation Techniques,
Personality Factors And Student’s Performance
 MOTIVATION
Motivation: is an internal process that energies, directs and maintains
behaviour over time. Each of these components are important:
• Energizing: is what starts you off and gets you going.
• Direction: determines what you do, what choices you make or what
interests you pursue.
(What energizes and directs our behavior? The explanation could be
drives, basic desires, needs, incentives, fears, goals, social pressure,
self-confidence, interests, curiosity, beliefs, values, expectations, and
more)
• Maintenance: ensures that this activity continues over time.
 TYPES OF MOTIVATION
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION:
Is the natural human tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we
pursue personal interests and exercise our capabilities.
When we are intrinsically motivated, we do not need incentives or
punishments, because the activity itself is satisfying and rewarding
(Anderman & Anderman, 2014; Deci & Ryan, 2002; Reiss, 2004).
Satisfied Spenser studies chemistry outside school simply because he loves
learning about chemistry; no one makes him do it. Intrinsic motivation is
associated with many positive outcomes in school such as academic
achievement, creativity, reading comprehension and enjoyment, and using
deep learning strategies (Corpus, McClintic-Gilbert, & Hayenga, 2009).
EXTRINSIC
In contrast, when we do something to earn a grade, avoid punishment,
please the teacher, or for some other reason that has very little to do with
the task itself, we experience extrinsic motivation.
We are not really interested in the activity for its own sake; we care only
about what it will gain us.
Safe Sumey works for the grade; she has little interest in the subject itself.
Extrinsic motivation has been associated with negative emotions, poor
academic achievement, and maladaptive learning strategies (Corpus et
al., 2009).
However, extrinsic motivation also has benefits if it provides incentives as
students try new things, gives them an
 BAISC HUMAN NEEDS
The most basic of human needs are physiological, such
as newborn infant’s need for food and warmth.
Later, infant’s begin to need safety, social contact and
love.
During childhood and adolescence, needs extend to
include esteem(from self and others).
Finally, in maturity, there is the need for self
actualization or achievement of one’s full potential
(“being all that you can be”).
Maslow (1968) called the four lower-level needs—for survival,
then safety, followed by belonging, and then self-esteem—
deficiency needs. When these needs are satisfied, the
motivation for fulfilling them decreases.
He labeled the three higher-level needs—cognitive needs, then
aesthetic needs, and finally self-actualization—being needs.
When they are met, a person’s motivation does not cease;
instead, it increases to seek further fulfillment.
Unlike the deficiency needs, these being needs can never be
completely filled. For example, the more successful you are in
your efforts to develop as a teacher, the harder you are likely to
strive for even greater improvement.
• Maslow’s theory has been criticized for the very
obvious reason that people do not always appear to
behave as the theory would predict.
• Most of us move back and forth among different types
of needs and may even be motivated by many needs at
the same time.
• Some people deny themselves safety or friendship to
achieve knowledge, understanding, or greater self-
esteem.
• Criticisms aside, Maslow’s theory does give us a way of looking at the
whole student, whose physical, emotional, and intellectual needs are
all interrelated.
• When children are hungry, they will have trouble focusing on academic
learning.
• A child whose feelings of safety and sense of belonging are threatened
by divorce may have little interest in learning how to divide fractions.
• If school is a fearful, unpredictable place where neither teachers nor
students know where they stand, they are likely to be more concerned
with security and less with learning or teaching.
• Belonging to a social group and maintaining self-esteem within that
group, for example, are important to students.
• If doing what the teacher says conflicts with group rules, students may
choose to ignore the teacher’s wishes or even defy the teacher.
 Self-Determination: Need for Competence,
Autonomy, and Relatedness
Self-determination theory suggests that we all need to feel competent
and capable in our interactions in the world, to have some choices and a
sense of control over our lives, and to be connected to others—to belong
to a social group.
Notice that these are similar to early conceptions of basic needs for
achievement (competence), power (autonomy and control), and affiliation
(belonging and relatedness).
Because different cultures have divergent conceptions of self, some
psychologists have asked whether the needs for competence, autonomy,
and relatedness are universal.
NEED FOR COMPETENCE is the individual’s need to demonstrate ability or
mastery over the tasks at hand.
Satisfying this need results in a sense of accomplishment, promotes self-
efficacy, and helps learners establish better learning goals for future tasks (J.
Kim, Schallert, & Kim, 2010).
NEED FOR AUTONOMY is central to self-determination because autonomy
is the desire to have our own wishes, rather than external rewards or
pressures, determine our actions (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Reeve, 2009; Reeve,
Deci, & Ryan, 2004).
People strive to have authority in their lives, to be in charge of their own
behavior. They constantly struggle against pressure from external controls
such as the rules, schedules, deadlines, orders, and limits imposed by
others. Sometimes, even help is rejected so that the individual can remain
in command (deCharms, 1983).
THE NEED FOR RELATEDNESS is the desire to belong and to establish
close emotional bonds and attachments with others who care about us.
 LESSONS FOR TEACHERS: STRATEGIES TO ENCOURAGE MOTIVATION
Four Basic Conditions for Successful Motivation Strategies in Classroom:
• First, the classroom must be relatively organized and free from
constant interruptions and disruptions.
• Second, the teacher must be a patient, supportive person who never
embarrasses the students because they made mistakes. Everyone in
the class should view mistakes as opportunities for learning.
• Third, the work must be challenging, but reasonable. If work is too
easy or too difficult, students will have little motivation to learn. They
will focus on finishing, not on learning.
• Finally, the learning tasks must be authentic. And as we have seen,
what makes a task authentic is influenced by the students’ culture.
 THE FOLLOWING ARE CLASSROOM MOTIVATION TECHNIQUES:
• Begin work at the students’ level, and move in small steps. One
possibility is to have very easy and very difficult questions on every
test and assignment, so all students are both successful and
challenged.
• Make sure learning goals are clear, specific, and possible to reach in
the near future. Break long term projects into sub-goals. If possible,
give students a range of goals at different levels of difficulty, and let
them choose.
• Stress self-comparison, not comparison with others. Give specific
feedback and corrections. Tell students what they are doing right as
well as what is wrong and why it is wrong.
• Arouse curiosity. Point out puzzling discrepancies between students’
beliefs and the facts. For example, Stipek (1993) describes a teacher
who asked her class five if there were “people” on some of the other
planets. When the students said yes, the teacher asked if people
needed oxygen to breathe. Because the students had just learned this
fact, they responded yes. Then the teacher told them that there is no
oxygen in the atmosphere of the other planets. This surprising
discrepancy between what the children knew about oxygen and what
they believed about life on other planets led to a rousing discussion
of the atmospheres of other planets.
• Explain the connections. When these connections are not obvious,
you should describe the connections to your students or ask them to
explain how the material will be important in their lives.
• Provide incentives and rewards. In some situations, teachers can offer
inducements and rewards for learning. Remember, though, that giving
rewards when students are already interested in the activity may
undermine intrinsic motivation.
• Give students frequent opportunities to respond through questions and
answers, short assignments, or demonstrations of skills and correct
problems quickly. You don’t want students to practice errors too long.
• Avoid heavy emphasis on grades and competition. An emphasis on
grades forces students to focus on performance, not learning. Anxious
students are especially hard hit by highly competitive evaluation.
• Model motivation to learn for your students. Talk about your interest in
the subject and how you deal with difficult learning tasks.
• Teach the particular learning strategies that students will need to
master the material being studied. Show students how to learn and
remember so they won’t be forced to fall back on self-defeating
strategies or rote memory.
 Anxiety And Its Effects
Anxiety is a feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness. It might cause
you to sweat, feel restless and tense, and have a rapid
heartbeat. It can be a normal reaction to stress.
For example, you might feel anxious when faced with a difficult
problem at work, before taking a test, or before making an
important decision. It can help you to cope.
The anxiety may give you a boost of energy or help you focus.
But for people with anxiety disorders, the fear is not temporary
and can be overwhelming.
 ANXIETY IN THE CLASSROOM.
• At one time or another, everyone has experienced anxiety,
or a general uneasiness, a feeling of self-doubt, and sense
of tension.
• Recent work on “academic anxieties,” which is a broad
term that encompasses anxiety experiences in educational
settings, has demonstrated that many forms of anxiety—
test anxiety, math anxiety, science anxiety, public speaking
anxiety— can lead to patterns of beliefs and behaviors that
hamper performance and promote disengagement in
learning (Cassady, 2010).
• Anxiety can be both a cause and an effect of school failure—students do
poorly because they are anxious, and their poor performance increases
their anxiety, creating a vicious cycle for the learner.
• Anxiety seems to have both cognitive and affective components. The
cognitive side includes worry and negative thoughts—thinking about how
bad it would be to fail and the worry that you will.
• The affective side involves physiological and emotional reactions such as
sweaty palms, upset stomach, racing heartbeat, or fear (Jain & Dowson,
2009; Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2014).
• Whenever there are pressures to perform, severe consequences for
failure, and competitive comparisons among students, anxiety may be
encouraged.
• Research with school-age children shows a relationship between the
quality of sleep (how quickly and how well you sleep) and anxiety.
• Better-quality sleep is associated with positive arousal or an
“eagerness” to learn.
• Poor-quality sleep, on the other hand, is related to debilitating
anxiety and decreased school performance.
Reaching Every Student: Coping with Anxiety
• Some students, particularly those with learning disabilities or
emotional disorders, may be especially anxious in school.
• When students face stressful situations such as tests, they can use
three kinds of coping strategies:
I. Problem-focused self-regulating learning strategies might include
planning a study schedule, borrowing good notes, or finding a
protected place to study.
II. Emotional management are attempts to reduce the anxious
feelings, for example, by using relaxation exercises or describing the
feelings to a friend.
III. Avoidance strategy along with going out for pizza or suddenly
launching an all-out desk-cleaning attack (can’t study until you get
organized!).
 GENERAL GUIDELINES ON HOW TEACHERS
CAN HELP STUDENTS COPE WITH ANXIETY
• USE COMPETITION CAREFULLY, EXAMPLES
I. Monitor activities to make sure no students are
being put under undue pressure
II. During competitive games, make sure all students
involved have a reasonable chance of succeeding.
III. Experiment with cooperative learning activities.
• AVOID SITUATIONS IN WHICH HIGHLY ANXIOUS STUDENTS WILL
HAVE TO PERFORM IN FRONT OF LARGE GROUPS, EXAMPLES
I. Ask anxious students questions that can be answered with a simple
yes or no, or some other brief reply.
II. Give anxious students practice in speaking before smaller groups

• AVOID UNNECESSARY TIME PRESSURE, EXAMPLES

I. Give occasional take-home tests
II. Make sure all students can complete classroom tests within the
period given
• DEVELOP ALTERNATIVES TO WRITTEN TESTS, EXAMPLES
I. Try oral, open-book, or group tests.
II. Have students projects, organize portfolios of their work, make oral
presentations, or create a finished products.
• MAKE SURE ALL INSTRUCTIONS ARE CLEAR. UNCERTAINTY CAN
LEAD TO ANXIETY, EXAMPLES
I. Write test instructions on the board or on the test itself instead of
giving them orally.
II. If you are using a new format or starting a new type of task, give
students examples or models to show how it is done.
• TEACH STUDENTS SELF-REGULATION STRATEGIES (SCHUTZ AND
DAVIS, 2000), EXAMPLES
I. Before the test: Encourage students to see the test as an important
and challenging task that they have the capabilities to prepare for.
Help students stay focused on the task of getting as much
information as possible about the test.
II. During the test: Remind students that the test is important (but not
overly important). Encourage task focus—pick out the main idea in
the question, slow down, stay relaxed.
III. After the test: Think back on what went well and what could be
improved. Focus on controllable attributions—study strategies,
effort, careful reading of questions, relaxation strategies.
 PERSONALITY FACTORS AND STUDENT’S
PERFORMANCE
Definition: Personality describes a person’s
dispositional and distinctive pattern of thoughts,
feelings, and behavior across various situations.
In any given moment, personality traits may be poor
predictors of behavior, but by comparing reactions over
a wide range of contexts, consistencies are likely to
appear. Personality traits thus serve as indications of
likely patterns of behavior.
 WHAT ARE THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS?
Openness to Experience (OE) refers to individuals who tend to
be creative, imaginative, and curious to experience new things
amongst other things.
Openness to experience includes traits like imaginative,
cultured, curious, original, broad minded, intelligent and
artistically sensitive.
Agreeableness (AG) encapsulates constructs of sympathy,
cooperativeness, and helpfulness towards others. It is
described as the degree to which a person is good naturally,
warm and co-operative as opposed to irritable, uncooperative,
inflexible, unpleasant and disagreeable.
Conscientiousness (CN) is the trait that is associated with diligence,
self-discipline, punctuality, and general competence.
Conscientiousness is the personality dimension that correlates the
strongest, out of all personality dimensions, with overall academic
performance.
Conscientiousness has two attributes: sustained effort and goal-setting
which contribute towards academic success.
Conscientious students tend to have high confidence level which
encourages greater learning.
Extraversion (ES) is regarded as a general tendency toward sociability,
assertiveness, activeness, being talkative, high amounts of emotional
expressiveness. Thus it is the degree to which a person is sociable, leader
like and assertive as opposed to withdrawn, quiet and reserved.
They thrive on being the centre of attention, enjoy meeting new people
and somehow tend to have the biggest friends and acquaintance group you
have known.
Extroverts tend to have very public facing roles including areas such as
teaching and politics. Seen as leaders, extroverted people will be more
likely to lead than stand in the crowd and be seen to not be doing anything.
Neuroticism (NM) is a general tendency to experience negative effects such
as fear, sadness, embarrassment, anger, guilt, and distrust. It is the degree to
which a person is calm and self-confident as opposed to anxious and insecure.
Individuals who exhibit high levels of neuroticism will tend to experience
mood swings, anxiety and irritability. Some individuals who experience
sudden changes in character from a day-to-day perspective could be highly
neurotic and respond to high stress levels in their work and personal lives.
Anxiety, which plays a large part in the makeup of neuroticism. People who
suffer with neuroticism will overthink a lot of situations and find difficulty in
relaxing even in their own space.
Those who rank lower on the neurotic level will exhibit a more stable and
emotionally resilient attitude to stress and situations.
Low neurotic sufferers also rarely feel sad or depressed, taking the time to
focus on the present moment and not get involved in mental arithmetic on
possible stress-inducing factors.
 USES OF PERSONALITY TRAITS IN STUDENTS
PERFORMANCE
• Conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience traits had a significant positive link with students’
academic success.
• Conscientiousness is related to hard work, this would translate into academic performance. They are discipline in what
they do and deliberately plan for their success.
• Agreeable performed significant better than their counterparts who are not. This is due to the fact that, academic
involves socialization.
• These qualities make it easy to work together with colleague students and learn from each other. Being generous,
friendly and helpful in nature makes it easy for them to received help and favour from fellow students as well.
• Students should be enlightened on the need to be agreeable in whatever they are doing hence agreeableness help the
students to be well-liked, respected and sensitive to the needs of others.
• Neuroticism negatively connects with students’ academic success.
• Neurotics are nervous, moody and emotionally over-reactive to minor issues. This category of people construe
ordinary situations as threatening, frustrating and hopelessly difficult.
• The students who are openness performed significantly in academics. Openness motivates critical thinking and
disassociated with absenteeism.
• Extraversion support social behaviours, and peer learning. Extraverted students would be more likely to socialised and
participate in other activities, rather than studying, resulting in lower levels of performance.
• Extraverts tended to be poorer in reflective problem solving due to them reaching cognitive closure prematurely.
• Academic instructors, school counselors, school mentors and
concerned individuals needed to be properly orientated as to the
significance of personality characteristics as determinants of
academic success.
• In order to guide them in planning the curriculum such design of
course assignments and testing methods should be based on
individual differences of the students.
• The five personality characteristics significantly served as the
predictors academic success, hence could be used as educational
programs that promote novel ideas and unconventional values in
students should be reinforced in higher institutions. For instance,
talent hunt programs that can stimulate the academic environment
can further assist in improving the academic success of the students.