TCPCG Week 5 Motivation

Ola Sra. Mondragon,
Esperando que te encuentres que se encuentre bien.
(*I hope that this message finds you well. English translation only added for assignment purposes)

Thank you for asking Dr. Garcia for input regarding Ronnie, your struggling student.
I sympathize with your concern for Ronnie and also with the frustration he is experiencing. Serendipitously, My focus is on learning and teaching children with special needs. The class is now studying learning theories that might be of help.

Exchange students can easily be overwhelmed as they try to assimilate to a new environment. This is common and may be enhanced if the following issues are present: the content is above the student’s ability, the student feels that they will not succeed in the new environment, the content and context don’t fit with prior understanding or the information is not supporting the student’s goals.

Unfortunately, the reality of Ronnie’s situation created anxiety and confusion which quickly squelched Ronnie’s motivation because his situation did not contain the 3 important elements effecting learning: the content was not tied to his self chosen objective of becoming a teacher, the context and social reward system inherently excluded Ronnie, the work was not commensurate with his ability (Goodman, 2008)
The result is that Ronnie has completely disengaged from the experience.

With greatest respect, I believe you are unknowingly contributing to the situation. You articulated that you are frustrated and don’t have positive feelings about Ronnie. This is impactful as Ronnie is now struggling with his self esteem as he falls further behind, the shift to teaching for a test inherently segregated Ronnie which makes him feel isolated and lastly he now feels the (real or perceived) withdrawal of your support and attention reinforcing his belief that he has already failed.

Ultimately Ronnie has lost motivation and his interest in learning such that it now affects his quality of life and his self esteem. This adds an additional complication as Ronnie now has emotional barriers to learning that will need to be addressed. A school of theorists suggest that emotional intelligence is more closely linked to success than IQ and is closely entwined with motivation. Neither EI or IQ alone is a recipe for failure in every situation(Goodman, 2008).

When reinforced and supported, motivation drives a person to procrastinate less, persevere longer and actively engage in the task at hand which results in improved performance. We need to recognize that in this instance Ronnie is a student with special needs as his fluency skills make it difficult for him to succeed in the general education classroom.
As the standard curriculum is currently focused on things that don’t effect Ronnie, this time could be productively used to instruct Ronnie at the appropriate level so that his growth will be measured from the appropriate benchmark.

There is scientific research that focuses on what is motivating to learners. The findings support that individuals allowed to choose the learning content which enables them to drive for mastery in an area which holds great meaning produce the most robust and innovative results (Pink, ).

In order to distill down the quantity of information so that it is actionable is a complex project. I have found the website Priceless-Teaching-Strategies.com to be most helpful. It has resources that address the many ways that teachers can facilitate and create the best environment in which learning can occur. The link follows.

http://priceless-teaching-strategies.com.

I look forward to the day when Ronnie teaches me conversational Spanish.
Lori Klimach -

Theory to Practice (volume 4, edition 82).

If the teacher actively models and encourages trust and empathy, provides meaningful content and attends to the emotional and intellectual need of the students nestled in an inquiry based, knowledge seeking environment

then students will have the opportunity to be an active participant selecting
meaningful content aligned with an important goal that motivates and engages them academically and emotionally allowing them to construct meaningful knowledge by critically analyzing, assimilating or accommodating newly acquired information that erects a framework which is flexible yet strong enough to endlessly support new information as it becomes available

because he/she created knowledge in a way that is transformative and unique, enhancing self confidence, evolving emotional literacy and infinitely expands the possibilities of future learning such that motivation and curiosity sustain the desire to learn and learning provides motion and curiosity.

Sugata Mitra recognizes that in nature, all systems self organize to support the group. His research demonstrates that our children self organize in order to learn (mitra, 2009). They teach themselves, then they teach others and others learn by watching. I support the notion that the desire to learn is natural and we instinctively support each other to learn. This is also supportive of the role motivation and empathy play in the learning process. Nel Noddings’ theory on the ethics and necessity of caring and how caring transforms the learning process into a meaningful, sustainable experience is supportive of Mitra’s theory.
References

Smith, M.K. 2004) Nel Noddings, the ethics of care and education, the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/noddings.htm

Goodman, G.S. (2008)Educational psychology An application of Critical Constructivism, New York, Lang.

Pink, D., Need info