In the previous lesson about social cognitive views of learning and motivation, you were introduced to different factors that can influence motivation. For example, you learned that self-efficacy, the beliefs of our own capabilities to perform a task successfully in certain contexts and situations, influence the goals we set as well as our persistence and effort in order to meet the goals. We also know that we must have certain skills in place, self-regulation, in order to meet the set goals. Self-regulation and motivation have cyclical relationship. Those who have motivation to be successful will practice in self-regulatory practices (which in turn have higher self-efficacy). Now we will begin to investigate in more depth different theories of motivations. We will learn about many different factors that can influence motivation, such as needs, goals, beliefs, emotions, and changes in the learning environment. Please read more about motivation in learning and teaching by studying the readings of this lesson.

According to Bandura, a person’s attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills comprise what is known as the self-system. This system plays a major role in how we perceive situations and how we behave in response to different situations. Self-efficacy plays an essential part of this self-system. This is the perspective that can help us understand what and how people learn by observing others and how in the process they begin to take control of their own behaviors. This theory has roots in early behaviorism. It addresses the effects of reinforcement and punishment. However, over the past few decades this theory has increasingly incorporated cognitive processes into its explanations of learning and now includes a blend of ideas from behaviorism and cognitive psychology.

Motivation:
• Something that energizes, directs, and sustains behaviors; it gets people moving, points them in a particular direction, and keeps them going.

Effects:
• Directs behavior towards particular goals
• Leads to increased effort and energy in pursuit of those goals
• It increases initiation of and persistence even in the face of obstacles
• It affects cognitive processes
• It determines which consequences are reinforcing and punishing

Principles of Motivation
• All children and adolescents are motivated in one way or another
• Motivation to do well in school is ground in a variety of cognitive and sociocultural factors that evolve over time.
• Conditions in the classroom play a major role in students’ motivation to learn and achieve.

Extrinsic Vs. Intrinsic Motivation
• Extrinsic motivation : Motivation resulting from factors external to the individual and unrelated to the task being performed
• Intrinsic Motivation: Motivation resulting from internal personal characteristics or inherent in the task being performed.
• Reflective thoughts: Can it be both? What are grades? extrinsic or intrinsic?

Five General Approaches to Motivation
• Behavioral Approaches
• Humanistic Approaches
• Cognitive Approaches
• Social Cognitive Theories
• Sociocultural Conceptions of Motivation

Attribution Theory: Attribution theory (Weiner, 1980, 1992) is probably the most influential contemporary theory with implications for academic motivation. It incorporates behavior modification in the sense that it emphasizes the idea that learners are strongly motivated by the pleasant outcome of being able to feel good about themselves. It incorporates cognitive theory and self-efficacy theory in the sense that it emphasizes that learners' current self-perceptions will strongly influence the ways in which they will interpret the success or failure of their current efforts and hence their future tendency to perform these same behaviors.
• The explanations that people tend to make to explain success or failure can be analyzed in terms of three sets of characteristics:
• First, the cause of the success or failure may be internal or external.
• Second, the cause of the success or failure may be either stable or unstable.
• Third, the cause of the success or failure may be either controllable or uncontrollable.

Learned Helplessness: General pervasive belief that one is incapable of accomplishing tasks and has little or no control of the environment.
• Learners with a mastery orientation behave in ways that lead to higher achievement over time.
• They set ambitious goals, seek challenging situations, and persist in the face of failure.
• Learners with learned helplessness underestimate their ability.
• Set goals that are easy to accomplish, avoid challenges that will maximize the learning and cognitive growth, and respond to failure in counterproductive ways (giving up too quickly).
• Children younger than 8 (for the most part) do not exhibit the extreme forms of learned helplessness because they still believe that success is due largely to their own efforts.
• By early adolescence a general sense of helplessness is more common.
• Middle school students believe they can’t control the things that happen to them
• Entity View of Intelligence Vs. Incremental View