Although extrinsic motivation can be useful when undertaking tedious tasks, it is obviously more desirable for a student to develop an intrinsic motivation to learn.
Self-efficacy, as described by Bandura, in his social cognitive theory is “the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (Bandura, 1995, p. 2). He also states that a person with strong self-efficacy will develop strong intrinsic motivations towards tasks and interests (Bandura, 1994).
Initially many of the students are placed on the course by Connexions. As it is not always their own choice to re-join education, their only motivation to join the course appears to be extrinsic, for example in the form of Education Maintenance Allowance or as part of a court order. Much has to be done to motivate these learners and many extrinsic motivators need to be applied such as praise and encouragement or physical rewards (e.g. chocolate).
A particular feature that I have observed is that although the college is in an average sized town with several secondary schools, most of the learners know each other due to being placed in various Work Related Learning or Pupil Referral groups. This can lead to a particular type of de-motivation as new learners join the group. This is where a learner does not understand their own current level of knowledge and understanding of a subject due to the fact that they have been out of education for some time and they see that their peers may be undertaking work of a higher level than them. The scenario tends to be: because their friend is doing a certain level of work, they too want to do work at this level. They then find that they are not able to do the work because of their current capabilities and so become de-motivated because they believe themselves inferior. With regard to Reece and Walker's adaptation of Maslow's hierarchy of basic human needs as applied to the classroom, (Reece & Walker, 2007), self-esteem is lowered and so motivation is affected.
O'Brien and Guiney state that: ‘Differentiation is not about troubleshooting. It is a concept that has to be seen in an inclusive way, applying to everyone' (O'Brien & Guiney, 2001, p. ix). Of course, attention should always be paid to the differentiation of work for students in all classes, but for the reason mentioned above it is particularly important that work is differentiated for these learners so that their self-esteem is not affected.
案例1-Case 1
J. joined a new group with seven other learners. He had travelled around the country with his family and so did not know any of the other learners. On his application to join the course he stated that he had no learning difficulties. His initial assessment results showed that he was Entry 1 for literacy and numeracy where the other learners were Entry 3 to Level 1. J. was upset when in the first class he was given a diagnostic numeracy test at Entry 2 when other learners were completing diagnostics at a higher level. In discussion with J. it appeared that he may have had dyslexia as he described some of the classic signs such as seeing floating words and writing words backwards. He explained that he had always thought of himself as stupid and blamed himself for his poor literacy and numeracy skills.
