{"id":66,"date":"2013-06-06T20:40:03","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T20:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmclaughlin.com\/web\/?p=66"},"modified":"2022-11-21T20:56:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T20:56:17","slug":"teach-2033what-motivates-a-student-06-06-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/06\/teach-2033what-motivates-a-student-06-06-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Teach 2033:What motivates a student? 06\/06\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0had an interesting conversation with a student the other day about motivation. \u00a0This seems to be a hard time of year for students to be motivated to do any work. \u00a0The sun is out the weather is nice and the beach is calling. \u00a0His main thought was that grades did not motivate him at all. \u00a0In one class he described how he was doing very poorly. \u00a0He was not motivated to do any better because he did not see a big enough improvement in the grade to matter. \u00a0In my class he is doing well but does not do any homework. \u00a0In this situation he did not see any reason to work any harder because he grades were just fine. \u00a0Good grades and bad grades had the same result. \u00a0Neither improved his motivation. \u00a0His thought was that he would only find himself motivated if he was interested in what he was doing. \u00a0Chemistry and Precalculus were not in his view interesting.<\/p>\n

I have been pondering this question for the past year and I am sure I will continue to ponder it. \u00a0I believe it is one of the main things education reform needs to focus in on to prepare our students to be citizens of 2033. \u00a0Motivation needs to move from the carrot stick approach to something more meaningful or \u201cinteresting\u201d to the students. \u00a0Dan Pink notes that motivation requires Autonomy Mastery and Purpose. \u00a0I believe that the student I was speaking with found that \u201cpurpose\u201d part lacking in his high school experience. He is able to see through the typical answers of \u201cWhy are we learning this?\u201d<\/p>\n

I proposed to him that if I presented a task and gave him the tools to accomplish it without any more instruction than that would he find that meaningful enough to spark his interest. \u00a0As I expected he said that would be great. \u00a0The question then becomes how do we design curriculum that hits that motivational spark of purpose and still cover the content for standards. \u00a0It requires a lot time and effort. \u00a0I know that is one of the things I will be thinking about for the summer as I plan my courses.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on \u201cWhat motivates a student?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0had an interesting conversation with a student the other day about motivation. \u00a0This seems to be a hard time of year for students to be motivated to do any work. \u00a0The sun is out the weather is nice and the beach is calling. \u00a0His main thought was that grades did not motivate him at all. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}