Task: 6c

Literture

Howard Gardner displays an interesting theory that the attempt to succeed with any intelligence will come to nothing if students are not motivated or attentive within a class:

‘to train any – indeed, all – of the intelligences are like to come to nought in the absence of proper motivation and sufficiently focused attention.’ (Howard Gardner, 1993, Frames of minds, Pg. 288)

But how do we achieve this, according to Wikipedia there are two forms that best describe motivation: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation which refers to self-motivation and motivation from reward schemes:

‘Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Motivational_theories accessed 1st April 2012 ‘Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the individual……… rewards like money and grades’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Motivational_theories accessed 1st April 2012

  ‘…as children grow, their passion for learning frequently seems to shrink’ http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/Student_Motivatation.html accessed 1st April 11th 2012

If this is the case and the desire to learn and progress is shrinking we need to home in on how to continue to motivate students and reignite their passion to learn through extrinsic motivation.

These set of scholarly ideas that at best represent a small fraction of what is written on motivation of young people. There is little consensus in this area apart from young people need to receive praise and reward to build self-esteem.