Chapter 10 page 203
himself that reading is not worthwhile anyway. In addition, Jeremy can explain away his failure
without losing face because he makes a great show of his lack of effort. He wants people to think
that he is intelligent, but he just doesn’t care about school, and that’s why he fails.
It is interesting to note that Jeremy does not want to openly admit that he is incapable of reading
well, that he has poor reading ability. He would much rather be seen as making no effort. He would feel a
sense of shame in admitting that he read poorly, but no shame in telling people that he makes no effort.
There is a great deal of cross-cultural research comparing American culture with Asian cultures, and one
interesting finding is that it appears that Asian students find it more shameful to say that they didn’t make
effort on a task than to say that they lacked ability at that task.
Four Myths of Motivation
In this section, we will look at four myths that are commonly held about motivation.
Motivation = Only Interest. Most people’s theory of motivation goes something like this: People
are motivated if they are interested. To increase motivation, you have to make things more interesting,
through such activities as teaching English by showing movies (The Blackboard Jungle), teaching poetry
through rap music (Dangerous Minds), outrageous bizarre behavior (Dead Poet’s Society), and cutting
apples in a fractions class (Stand and Deliver). Similarly, if people are unmotivated, it means that they are
not interested. And, according to this theory of motivation, if a student says that she/he finds a class to be
boring, the cause of the student’s poor motivation must be that the teacher uses dull instructional
techniques.
Motivational researchers have a very different perspective. Interest is certainly an important part
of the motivation equation. But as you have seen, there’s a lot more to motivation than interest. Interest is
just one of many components.
Interest ---> Competence. (If a student is interested, she/he will become competent soon.)
This is not necessarily so at all. It would be easy to inspire me to want to read Japanese comic books, but I
lack the competency to do so. Similarly, if a student decides that English class this year is really
interesting, but the student cannot read well enough to understand the novels being read, motivation will
still end up being low.
If I say I’m bored because the class is boring, then you can take me at my word. One reason
why the student says the class is boring might be that the class really is boring. But there are other possible
reasons, as well:
- The student lacks competence, which makes the class seem boring, no matter how hard the
teacher tries. - The student is covering up a presumed lack of ability. As shown in the diagram on the previous
page, because the student lacks competence (or at least a belief in competence), the student saves face by
declaring that the goal of learning or succeeding in school is worthless.
When students lack the knowledge, skills, and cognitive strategies that they need to succeed, then
the expectation of success is low, which again makes motivation low. The student says that the class is
boring, but the reason that it is boring is that the student lacks the knowledge, skills, and strategies to
succeed, not because the teacher is using dull teaching techniques. The solution to this problem is not to
use more interest-enhancing teaching techniques. The solution is to do a better job of teaching students the
knowledge, skills, and strategies that they need to succeed. Teaching cognitive strategies is particularly
important.