Motivating your Learner

2. Motivating your Learner Shelley Ross, PhD Department of Family Medicine Faculty Development January 13, 2011

4. Overview • Motivation theory: what makes people want to learn? • Findings from motivation research • Feedback: • What doesn’t work • What does work • Applying research findings to the clinical teaching setting

5. What is Motivation? “Motivation is the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and sustained” Pintrich & Schunk, 2004

7. Motivation: a History • Initial work : psychology researchers • Focus: What drives behaviour? • Basic needs = main motivators • Stimulus-response • Hull (1943) moved motivation theory beyond basic needs and into the domain of drive to succeed

8. Achievement Theory • Growing out of Hull’s work, educational psychologists began to study what drives students in classrooms • Cognitive theories of motivation are the most researched • These are loosely termed as “achievement theories”

9. Achievement Theory • Five main theories of motivation in education • Much overlap between theories • Certain components will resonate for people • Instructional recommendations from research around each theory are applicable to most students

10. Self-efficacy • Bandura (1997) & Schunk (1991) • Self-perception of “I can do it” leads to motivation • Future-oriented; situation-specific; unstable – varies with situation; • Expectancies and goals required to determine self-efficacy

11. Self-worth • Covington (1984; 1992) • People are motivated by the need to feel competent; “to be worthy is to be able” (Graham & Weiner, 1996) • Need is to protect a sense of one’s own ability in order to preserve self-worth • success = high self-worth, • failure = low self-worth • want to maximize rewards and minimize punishment.

12. Expectancy-value • Eccles (1987, 2005), Eccles & Wigfield (2000) • Choice, persistence, direction of behaviour depend upon value of the task and its successful completion • expectancies based on learner’s self-perceptions of competence • 4 dimensions for task-value: • attainment value • intrinsic value • utility value • cost

13. Attribution Theory • Weiner (1985) • Outcomes (particularly failure) lead to search for reasons for outcome; • causal attribution impacts future expectancies • Causal search; focus on outcome (past-oriented); • attributions can be • internal/external (locus), • stable/unstable (stability), • and within or beyond the learner’s control (controllability)

14. Achievement Goal Theory • Ames (1984), Dweck & Leggett (1988), Nicholls, 1984) • Implicit goals exist for all tasks: • do it to learn/do it for yourself, • OR do it to look good/be better than others (OR both) • Implicit goal orientations are adopted for a task: • mastery/learning/task orientation = doing task to learn/improve skill • performance-avoid = do not do task to avoid looking bad • performance-approach = do task to look good

15. Learning and Motivation • Self-efficacy and goal orientation are predictive of, or positively correlated with, the use of cognitive strategies and self-regulated learning (Bandalos et al., 2003; Patrick et al., 2001; Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990; Schraw et al., 1995; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons 1990) • Self-worth predicts the use of self-handicapping (Covington, 2000), which interferes with student learning

16. Learning and Motivation • Task value predicts whether students plan to enroll, & whether they actually enroll in courses; expectancies predict achievement once students actually enroll (Wigfield & Eccles, 2002), which suggests that expectancies are impacting student learning during the course. • Attributions indirectly affect student learning through their impact on self-efficacy and self-worth (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Pintrich, 2003).

17. Motivation and Instruction • Achievement motivation constructs interact • Planning instruction around one motivational variable will likely have an influence on other motivational constructs. • Improving self-efficacy can encourage adoption of a learning goal; • Creating an environment that protects self-worth while allowing mistakes can lead to adaptive attributions, higher self-efficacy, and eventually the adoption of a learning goal. • Creating a learning environment that encourages and fosters motivation can lead to improvements in learning outcomes.

19. Feedback • Effects of feedback have been examined in all areas of achievement motivation, • but are particularly important in the impact feedback has on attributions, self-worth, and intrinsic motivation. • In the case of attributions, the feedback given by teachers after either success or failure will influence the attributions that students make for the outcome (Pintrich, 2003; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002).

20. Feedback • Accuracy of feedback regarding the causes of failure – was the failure due to lack of effort? poor strategy use? – should be both adaptive and honest. • The best evidence for the impact of feedback on attributions can be found in research on attributional retraining, where students are systematically given feedback to encourage them to make adaptive attributions (for example, Hall et al., 2004).

21. Feedback • Finally, feedback as a course progresses was found to have an influence on students’ self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1993, as cited in Tollefson, 2000, p. 68). • Performance-focused feedback, as opposed to effort or strategy-focused feedback, may lead to the development of high outcome expectancies paired with low self-efficacy, • which can lead to the choice not to exert effort.

22. Feedback • So what IS feedback? • Evaluative information in response to an activity or behaviour • Key elements: • Informative • There is always an evaluation component to feedback in education

24. Feedback & Assessment • In our context: • In both undergraduate and graduate programs • Feedback is part of assessment

26. Feedback & Assessment • Feedback on performance can be one of two kinds: • Feedback to further learning • Feedback that is a judgment of learning

27. Feedback & Assessment • Five kinds of evaluative feedback • Confirmation (No, you’re wrong) • Corrective (No, you’re wrong. The answer is Alberta) • Explanatory (Your answer was wrong because Edmonton is not in B.C.; it is in Alberta) • Diagnostic (Your answer suggests that some extra study of Canadian geography would be helpful) • Elaborative (You will find as you study further that Edmonton is home to the University of Alberta, home of a terrific Family Medicine Residency program).

28. Feedback & Residents • Best feedback to Residents is INFORMATIVE • Residents enjoy compliments • But will learn better from constructive feedback

30. Feedback & Residents • Boehler et al., 2006 • RCT: students given informative feedback on their performance after instruction in two-handed surgical knot-tying VS. students given compliments on how well they did the technique • Informative feedback group performed the skill better • BUT: compliments group reported significantly higher satisfaction with the instruction

32. Feedback & Residents • Feedback should be about specific behaviours • “You handled that encounter well” does not give as much information as “You communicated well with Mrs. Smith. She really responded to the way you made an effort to keep eye contact with her and talked to her at eye level instead of standing and looking down at her”

33. Feedback & Residents • All feedback should give the opportunity for further learning • “You seemed to have some trouble explaining those medication instructions to Mr. Smith. Would it be helpful if we reviewed asthma management?”

34. Feedback & Residents • Feedback should be about actions or decisions, not about how you interpret the Resident's reasons behind those actions

35. Feedback & Residents • If you do give subjective feedback, be sure to indicate that you are doing so

36. Feedback & Residents • Frame feedback in a way that allows Residents to self-evaluate first • “How do you think that went?”

37. Feedback & Residents • Feedback should be clear • Resist the temptation to address multiple issues at once • Provide specific feedback about a specific behaviour or action • If a larger issue must be addressed, make sure the feedback session includes the opportunity for the resident to make a plan to rectify the problem

39. Questions?