What’s up! Thank you for checking in with us. We hope your time recently has been as productive as ours! We’ve been reviewing our blog posts and have thought about how we can continue these posts in a unique way throughout the school year. We appreciate your support throughout our journey and we hope you’ve gained some value from our posts. We will continue to provide value, just in different ways. We want the REAL ones to know that we are always trying to come up with different ways to connect with you. We thought we’d provide a perspective about education from a researcher’s point of view. This work that we are about to present to you is different from our usual posts. We wanted to show you how important education is from the lens of an expert. This work cites researchers who have been learning about education for decades. Here is a brief excerpt from a literature review about the perception of education… Enjoy!
Education: The Motivation to Learn
Since attitudes can change, it is important to understand how they change as well as to what extent to provide more information for educators and researchers about ways to enhance attitudes toward education. Digelidis et al. (2003) found, after a year of collecting data, that a school’s environment, as well as the motivational climate, has an effect on students’ attitudes toward education. The teacher’s behavior can also influence students’ attitudes toward education (Subramaniam & Silverman, 2007). Additional examples of research on attitudes across school curriculum include: (a) studying students’ attitudes about science (Osborne et al., 2003); (b) examining students’ attitudes about math and its relevance with regard to achievement (Ma & Kishor, 1997); (c) investigating students’ attitudes regarding academic assessment and how that perception contributes to their approach towards learning and studying (Struyven et al., 2005) and; (d) assessing teachers’ attitudes about the use of technology in their classroom (Mumtaz, 2000).
According to Sansone and Smith (2000), students who are extrinsically motivated need approval through external signs to enhance their perceived worth. To motivate students’ academic success, recognition and praise for their good academic work are important (Knowles & Kerkman, 2007). Specifically for high school students, this could mean the opportunity to obtain scholarships, while for college students, this could be the opportunity to find a decent job by using their degree and highlighting the academic accomplishments on their resume (Knowles & Kerkman, 2007). Grades are typically used as validation for academic achievement; however, they are not the only forms of validation that can be used to indicate a student’s academic progress. Jacobsen (2000) found that college students have a higher level of extrinsic goal orientation, such as garnering internships and even becoming a part of academic-based extracurricular organizations. These extrinsic motivations, however, can undermine the importance of intrinsic motivation as it pertains to students’ perceived academic success (Deci et al., 1999). Therefore, emphasizing external grades and rewards as “success” may negatively impact a student’s interest in learning when they do not obtain the typical, external criteria of academic achievement.
Bye et al. (2007) found that intrinsic motivation to learn and overall higher levels of interest in learning predicted students’ positive affect toward school. Intrinsic motivation has been defined as an internal desire to learn (Knowles & Kerkman, 2007). Vansteenkiste et al. (2004) found that students with higher levels of intrinsic motivation processed reading material at a deeper level, showed more persistence and achieved higher grades than students who were extrinsically motivated. The constructivist perspective of learning suggests that students gain an enhanced meaning and knowledge from academic material by relating new information to prior knowledge and experience (Olgren, 1998). According to Knowles and Kerkman (2007) students should use a combination of elaboration and organization strategies to analyze information that builds on prior knowledge in memory. Student Approaches to Learning (SAL) is another approach to learning theory, which suggests that students restructure the learning material in a way that reflects their existing knowledge about a particular subject (Biggs et al., 2001).
Students who are motivated to learn have an intention to understand the material for themselves by relating their ideas to previous knowledge and experiences and interact with the content in a critical way that provides a logical interpretation of the content that they can understand (Knowles & Norman, 2007). These are the actions of students who are intrinsically motivated and use deep thought about the content, whereas a more surface-level approach to learning is consistent with extrinsic motivation. This surface-level learning requires a more passive reproduction of the content without reflecting on the purpose or guiding principles that lead to a deeper level of understanding (Knowles & Norman, 2007). This work might suggest that those high in intrinsic motivation are more likely to follow a high elaboration route to persuasion whereas those high in extrinsic motivation are more likely to rely on simple cues with respect to attitude change.
Academic skill development is associated with classroom objectives and routine; however, the acquisition of knowledge is the product of a more independent focus and motivation for learning (Brodie, 1964). A negative attitude toward school, therefore, has an inhibitory effect on learning. Academic underachievement has been defined as a discrepancy between a student’s perceived ability and their overall academic performance (Reis & McCoach, 2000). Students who have a low self-motivation to achieve a goal and a negative attitude toward school and their teachers have been more likely to underachieve academically (Colangelo et al., 1993; McCall et al., 1992). Further, underachievers also have lower academic self-perceptions and self-regulation, which may interfere with their overall academic efficacy (Reis & McCoach, 2000). A student’s achievement values related to their goals also affect their self regulation and motivation to do well in school because goals influence how a student decides to approach, engage in, and respond to achievement tasks (Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000; Wigfield, 1994). When students value a task, they are more likely to put more effort into the task (Wigfield, 1994). Peterson (2000) found that the academic achievers have a career direction that promotes their academic achievement and determination. Emerick (1996) also found that by developing specific career and school-related goals, students were able to shift from underachieving to increased academic success.
According to Gentry et al. (2001), students can become more uninterested in school by the time they are in middle school, which may exist throughout the remainder of their schooling. Unrau & Schlackman (2006) found results suggest a significant decline in overall motivation to read during the middle school years for students in urban schools. This motivation was suggested to be influenced by students’ ethnicity, gender, grade level, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and previous reading achievement. The social structure and the learning environment of students, therefore, directly affect their beliefs and intention to read (Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). Specifically, the social context and environment shape students’ beliefs and motivation to conform to certain expectations about the value of reading and education more broadly. Research has also shown that students of color have negative attitudes toward school science and their futures in that field (Atwater et al., 1995; Zacharia & Barton, 2004). Further, students’ attitudes toward science as they get older, specifically in high school, become moderately low (Atwater et al., 1995; Zacharia & Barton, 2004). It is worth noting that the studies that have demonstrated this finding used a “generalized” science definition that may lack the nuanced differences between how individuals perceive science, which may be an assumption that further dichotomizes the perception of science among diverse student populations (Zacharia & Barton, 2004). Many researchers regard a lack of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as the main cause of students’ negative attitudes toward science (Zacharia & Barton, 2004). External factors that contribute to lowered attitudes include school variables, specifically in the classroom, such as how well students like their teachers and the science curriculum (Zacharia & Barton, 2004).
Deci and Ryan (1985) suggest that providing opportunities for autonomy and participation in learning can positively influence students’ motivation for succeeding in school, especially among subjects that are less appealing or preferred. McCoach & Siegle (2003) also suggest that self-regulation, which comprises a student’s motivation, behavior and metacognitive pursuit of learning, is an important factor that contributes to a student’s academic achievement. Students who have increased self-regulation are able to actively participate in their learning through self-management strategies and consistent effort (Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990). Therefore, internalized self-regulation and motivation are significant predictors of academic achievement, which elicits a necessity to investigate the factors that influence internalized self-regulation and motivation.
While this work is a bit more advanced than our previous posts, we thought this would provide value for you in a different way. This could be an introduction for you if you’ve never read a literature review before. This could be a nuanced approach that you gained value from simply because of the different perspective that this work provides. Regardless of your level of expertise, we hope this allowed you to gain insight into the perception of education as well as what truly motivates students to want to learn. As we approach another school year, we want to thank you for your time and we look forward to providing more unique perspectives as it relates to education and learning!
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Recognize Education And Learning 