Motivation stuff...

1. Do you think the students in your cohort classroom are more intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated? Why?

• There were varying levels of intrinsic motivation in my classroom, but the classroom environment seemed to promote intrinsic motivation. It was a very free-flowing classroom, where students got to make choices and had a lot of control. Students were willing to do their work and participate, and they were often very excited when they learned something new.
  

2. How are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affected by rewards and praise?

• Intrinsic motivation can be either helped or harmed by rewards and praise, depending on if the rewards and praise build self-efficacy and independence or if they build dependence on the teacher. Extrinsic motivation can certainly be promoted by rewards and praise, but not necessarily, again if they are rewards and praise that help students gain control over their own learning.
  

3. Why do expectancies and values influence student motivation?

• Simply put, what we believe affects what we do. If students believe that something is important (values) and that they are capable of completing a task (expectancies), they are naturally going to try harder. If the students feel that a task has low value and has low expectancies, they won't try ask hard. After all, they could be setting themselves up for failure, or wasting their time on something that isn't important.
  

4. Describe some examples of student-level and classroom-level strategies for increasing motivation that you saw in the classroom?

• Student-level: students being given choices/control; stickers
  
• Classroom-level: cooperative-learning instead of ability grouping when it came time for centers; a focus on group work and relationships within the classroom environment.
  

5. Of the behavioral, cognitive, and self-worth motivation theories, with which theory do you most agree, and why?

• Just for the record, I hate being required to choose a certain theory that most closely represents my own beliefs, when I would much rather just take each for what it's worth, take tidbits of truth from each, mix them together, and work with my own personal theory. It's much easier for me.
• With that said, I'll stop arguing with the textbook for awhile, ignore the fact that I'm a very independent thinker (at least momentarily), and try to come up with a suitable answer. Even though it probably won't be a very good representation of what I really believe. Oh well. I'll at least give it my best shot.
• For the purposes of this assignment, I'm gonna go with self-determination theory (partially just to counter the other two people I've seen who have both said self-worth). I like the emphasis this theory has on the learner becoming autonomous, or being a self-regulated, independent learner. It seems that this is the sort of learner in life itself that God would like us to be, and that is the sort of learning environment that I would like to have in my own classroom.
  
• I must say, though, that with these theories' focus on the roll of the student, I like other sorts of ways of looking at things that address both the teacher's roll and the student's roll more equally. But then again, I said I wasn't going to argue with the textbook. The End.