Learning Motivation Learning and Motivation

Learning Motivation

Learning and Motivation in the TAFE Program

The TAFE program at the Alpha College is designed to help students from low income areas and students who are in need of various support services to achieve their degree ambitions. Like many schools in the Sydney region, Alpha experiences a distinct diversity of applicants and students. This means that its makeup varies across its experiences, needs and likely learning strategies. At the basis of this variation is a fundamental demand upon instructors and administrators to approach learning and motivation from a progressive educational perspective. The individualization of program approaches, the use of appropriately meted out student assessments and the ultimate utilization of methods such as positive reinforcement and progressive grading all will be discussed and theoretically founded ways to approach student motivation in the technical vocational context.

TAFE should be considered an ideal context into which we might filter this examination of learning and motivation amongst a diversified group of students. The nature of the TAFE program -- which is one that both caters to a diversity of students in need of degree services and which provides for a class of students which is particularly vulnerable to potential disinclinations toward learning motivation -- is such that the individualized learning attention and strategic support are absolutely essentially.

Indeed, so to is the process of student assessment, which can be crucial to ensuring that support services have been successful or which can help to identify specific areas of need.

As the emphasis on teaching students to understanding or honing specific educational skills is eclipsed by a misappropriated focus on standardized testing and a focus on culturally inflexible modes of evaluation, the actual educational value yielded from traditional curriculum is falling well short of desired national and international standards in countries like Australia, the U.K. And the U.S.

This must be the reality considered at the basis of any effort inclined to change the way we assess our students at the Alpha College. The frequency of assessment should be seen as a function of the nature of an assessment agenda. This is to indicate that while there is reasonable cause to superficially suspect that the improvement in the frequency of assessment is tantamount to its effectiveness, there is certainly a great deal more to the equation than this. Most prominently, it bears noting that student assessment has evolved to take on many forms, and that not all of these forms are rendered more useful by a greater frequency of implementation. Particularly, those forms of assessment that tend to be more quantitative and comparative in nature may reflect less meaningful information when view across short durations as opposed to lengthier time-samples Contrarily, there are some forms of educational assessment that are only legitimately effective when implemented with concerted regularity. Particularly, qualitative assessments which tend to be more individualized in nature, may require a greater frequency of implementation in order to reflect subtle individual needs and aptitudes across small time variations. With this in mind, a discussion on the relationship between assessment frequency and the factorial impact on students both positive and negative must be concerned specifically with the nature of the assessment framework. Relevant to a consideration of the assessment framework is the relationship between this and the academic context (i.e. course material, academic level, etc.) Also important is a consideration of the assessment framework as it relates to such factors as evolving available technology and the need for sensitivity to cultural or individualistic diversity in the educational setting.

At the basis of our discussion is the understanding that a challenge commonly encountered by individuals and institutions engaged in the provision of education is in the motivation of students, either to learn or to achieve. This results in a set of obstacles to classroom performance, knowledge integration and preparedness for subsequent levels of education or occupations. It thus falls upon the educator to overcome such obstacles through the cultivation of motivation, interest, knowledge accessibility, a sense of the value of education and a conception of purpose within the academic setting. Certainly a considerable undertaking in the face of trends of student social detachment, bureaucratic hindrance and institutional prejudices, advocates of psychosocial progressive methods intended to change the nature of educational evaluation are beset on equal sides with resistance. The conventional espousal of the grading system, coupled with long-term enforcements of the careerist rewards correlated to these grades, is deeply ingrained in our approach to education. Without abandoning this notion, it may yet be possible to add a nuance to this system which invokes a sense-of-self that is as much associated with accomplishment as is the assignment of a desirable letter-grade. Methods of positive reinforcement amongst students have proven to generate positive self-images, improved perceptions of the accessibility of individual success and overall increases in performance indices.

Though there is good reason to believe that there is a real correlation between positive reinforcement and positive academic performance, there nonetheless remain countless factors which yet resist classification or specification. Particularly, while we recognize that there are benefits to the use of positive reinforcement in the classroom, we are still faced with the uncertain possibilities that there are equal or greater drawbacks to its use. Moreover, and in association with this uncertainty, there remain as yet unnumbered forms and permutations which 'positive reinforcement' may take. These range on a spectrum from the inherent implications of the letter-grading system, the presence of institutional performance rewards such as the clear demarcations between tiers of higher-learning, the engagement of students with forms of verbal and actual reward for specific classroom achievements and the promotion of strong self-efficacy ratings in the interests of suggesting intrinsically formulated motivation. As a result of this range of possible avenues for implementing positive reinforcement in order to draw students into the academic process, just a few selected from virtually limitless theoretical and practical possibilities, there remains a collective uncertainty as to which ways we may best use what we understand about positive reinforcement in order to improve educational standards for both the student and the educator. As a result of these unknowns, it may be seen as the primary goal of this study to determine the best way to harness the benefits of positive reinforcement by evaluating various methods of such against one another.

One pertinent study endorses the overall notion that incorporating positive reinforcement into normal curricular evaluations and practices may enhance the educator's ability to serve both the collective and individual interests of the class. According to a 2005 study by Alison Galbraith and Joy Alexander, some sensible ways to assimilate such individually sensitive practices are through "goal-setting, exception-finding, scaling and locating resources or individual strengths... principally as a method of encouraging the child to reflect on and discuss progress, in literacy (thus developing both interactive and metacognitive skills for themselves). (Galbraith et al., 29) This intimates the important prospect to be considered as a metric for a more sophisticated study than the one at hand, in which the socialization benefits of positive reinforcement in the academic setting are gauged. In this context, the implication is that the increased frequency of performance evaluation is bearing a generally positive effect on our students.

In one regard, the increased frequency of assessment can be characterized as being quite important to the potential for a student's success. However, it should noted in this context that the frequency of such assessment is most beneficial when molded with specific purposes apart from the hierarchical ranking of students by performance or ability. This is why an article on the subject, published in 1990, encourages teachers and curricula to "greatly increase the frequency of formative evaluation, and provide funding and incentives to use the evaluation data for ongoing improvement of educational programs." (Bunderson, 81) Such is to say that the frequency of the evaluation methods used should be paired with a conscientious drive to employ these methods to the correct ends. When Bunderson refers to 'formative' assessment, it is his objective to encourage the use of this type of evaluation to instruct focus on particular areas of need for the student.

In this sense, the frequency of evaluation is actually quite an important factor. The traditional notion of using evaluation at certain chronological points during an educational term might not be seen as an effective way to dole out formative assessment to students as its infrequency would generally allow little room for response within the scope of specific subjects or learning areas. We might take, for example, the conventional mode of semester-end grade-based assessment, utilized in a vast majority of American educational institutions, for consideration of the negative offshoot of relying solely upon this type of evaluation as a means to improving students' capacities in particular areas.

Returning to the promotion of quality performance as a means to applying frequent assessment, as previous research indicates, there are a variety of approaches which can be taken in bringing positive reinforcement into traditional curricular programs. One such model is the interdependent group contingency, in which "all of the group access to the same consequence, but require some collective level of group behavior or performance to receive reinforcement ('if the average grade on this weekends homework assignment is 85% or higher, we all will watch a movie Monday afternoon.') (Tingstrom et al., 226) in correspondence with the example provided by the researchers responsible for this evaluation, it may be deduced that such method of positive reinforcement implementation is best suited to a younger educational context such as grammar school. It may only be considered appropriate to attach the positive consequences of individual efforts with the capabilities of an entire class in settings where future prospects such as class rank and college admissions have not yet entered into the discourse over performance motivators.

Tingstrom et al. also identify the independent group-oriented contingencies, which "involve consequences, and criteria for all group members, but access to reinforcement for each group member is based on each member's performance (e.g., 'whoever makes a 90% or higher on the end chapter math test will be able to pick a prize from the treasure chest.' (Tingstrom et al., 226) in many ways, this has proved the most practical form of positive reinforcement throughout the course of one's education. By rewarding positive individual performances, we tend to instill the impression that proficiency and excellence will generally be treated with positive personal outcomes. A relevant reality within the context of academia and the professional world alike, this method of positive reinforcement is executed according to the example provided by Tingstrom et al. In the grammar school setting. Taking on forms such as honors societies, scholarship moneys and access to reputable institutions of higher-learning in later educational settings, the independent attachment of reward to performance suggests itself as a sensible employment of positive reinforcement.

Interestingly, a study by Effie MacLellan offers some insight into the potential drawbacks inherent in relying too heavily upon praise and positive reinforcement as means to promoting student interest in learning. The author warns that implementing such a rewards system in lieu of applying penalties for poor performance may promote what she refers to as 'learned helplessness.' (MacLellan, 196) by coming to depend upon such extrinsic positive reinforcement for the germination of personal motivation, a student may come to fear failure, to depend on others for indices of his success and to build essentially unrealistic expectations of perfection for himself. In this regard, it may be suggestible that any sensible model for applying positive reinforcement as a means for improving student performance attempt to balance this system with supplemental means to enabling the emergence of individual, intrinsic motivations for the pursuit of success. Herein lay the challenge at the crux of public education, where we are engaged in an ongoing effort to improve our capacity to integrate individual and institutional qualities in the classroom setting. The primary risk in utilizing such methods of demonstration of a positive assessment is that these tend to conflate reward with assessment.

Thus, the consequence of this for the student is far greater even than the 'learned helplessness' aforementioned. In fact, the educational system as a whole is threatened by the reliance upon assessment that is applied frequently and that implies extrinsic rewards are the sum accomplishment of educational success. Herein, we can see the potential for the utmost of negative impacts upon the student through the improper application of a positive reinforcement strategy, with the end result being the deflation of a necessary emphasis on learning aptitude and learning strategy refinement. By using such peripheral and misdirected emphases to provide students with assessments that rightfully might be used to appropriate the methods of learning favored in future academic pursuits, educational institutions will tend to compromise, or even to obscure, the actual scholastic needs of students. Thus, the 'helplessness' is fundamentally imposed upon students, who are offered increasingly less insight into specific performance indicators, even as the application of assessment techniques at frequent intervals has become an increasingly favored means to constructing curriculum goals.

This reveals yet another important aspect of assessment which supplements the value of frequency. The structuring of an assessment program which offers insights frequently and in a form that employs the objective observation of the teacher is important if a student is to gain an understanding of strengths and weaknesses, as well as ways to cultivate the former and overcome the latter. Clearly, the simplicity and relatively static nature of letter-grading or numerical performance evaluators is not sufficient to demonstrate to a student that there are particular points of need in his learning agenda. Therefore, an increased frequency of evaluation should be considered in light of several fundamental changes in the very approach taken to framing the educational experience. Instructors employing a formative assessment approach distinguished by a need for frequency must design evaluation matrices "that require human judgment and that measure more complex, integrated, and strategic objectives." (Bunderson, 82) This is to say that marking one's performance percentages and consequently assigning a letter grade to this percentage fails considerably to address any distinct or individual needs in an educational context, and simply have the external impact of rendering a student easier to categorize rather than evaluate. Thus, frequently or infrequently, the outlook for students who are primarily subjected only to quantitative assessment techniques is likely to be defined by a lowered expected of improved learning aptitude, supplanted instead by a competitive sense of dependency upon the evaluative standards that are the end, but not the means, of an assessment.

Educational theory is a broad, diverse and highly debated discipline. It is rendered thus by an emergent educational perspective which argues that both learning and motivation are achieved by a wide array of means rather than by any single and preferred means. The justification for this perspective is in the diversity of learning needs and abilities represented in students, who tend to be moved to enthusiasm by an infinite array of subject matters and teaching methods. Therefore, in the discussion held here, learning and motivation will be evaluated according to the idea that instruction must encourage the embrace of individual learning strategies, independent learning and the development of critical thinking skills.