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UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION 63- What are the causes of my successes and failures?
- How do I feel about my academic challenges?
Notice that all of the questions deal with beliefs and perceptions. Stu-
dents can learn a great deal about their motivation by examining how
their beliefs and perceptions influence them.How Do I Value Different Academic Courses or Tasks? Values and interests
play an important role in academic behavior. They affect students’
choices of activities, as well as the level of effort and persistence they
put forth on a task or assignment. For example, Satisfied Sheila enjoys
intellectual challenges, as demonstrated by her interest in poetry.
Unfortunately, she fails to incorporate her interests in her school
courses and assignments.
Students in a given course may have different reasons for enrolling.
Let’s consider three students in a chemistry course. The first student
decides to take the course because it fulfills a general education
requirement. She has very little interest in the subject. The second stu-
dent is enrolled in the course because she enjoys learning about science
and would like to pursue a career in the health sciences. The third stu-
dent wants to learn chemistry because doing well can help her get on
the dean’s list and feeling competent is an important value in her life.
All three of these students want to succeed but may behave differ-
ently during the term. At times, their different value orientations may
influence them to make different decisions regarding their effort and
persistence in the course. For example, during final exams, students
often have to make decisions concerning where to place their great-
est effort. Students who are taking a course just to complete an elec-
tive may decide to spend more time during finals on a course where
higher achievement is more important.
Students who limit their involvement or effort in a particular class
are not necessarily lazy or unmotivated. Instead, they are motivated
to participate in different things such as athletics, social organizations,
family activities, or relationships rather than academics (Stipek, 1998).
College students do not develop a personal interest in or high value
for all their courses. Some required or elective courses are more inter-
esting than others. The task, however, is to manage motivation to suc-
cessfully complete courses, even when there is little interest in them.What Are My Goals? I begin my “learning to learn” course by asking
students about their goals. Each year I find many differences in the
abilities of students to articulate their goals. Some students have clear
and well-defined goals. They know why they are in college and what
they are attempting to attain. At the other end of the spectrum, some
students have not even defined their personal goals and are not sure