Creative work
On the topic "Knowledge - children of surprise and curiosity
(on the question of motivating students to learn) "
Kovdor, 2004
© site
2 ... Types of motives and motivation for learning activities
The topic of motive and motivation is very well developed in educational psychology, and this, oddly enough, creates certain difficulties in mastering this topic, since psychologists often have several different opinions on the same issue, and therefore, differing methods for identifying which -or a fact. It seems that the only way to solve these difficulties is to define your own position on this problem, and choose for your work those terms, those methods that are more understandable and closer to the "style" of teaching. Which I did in my subsequent work.
For a better understanding of the problem, it is advisable to agree on the unambiguity of the definitions of the terms "motive" and "motivation", although in psychology there are different definitions of these concepts.
So: what is "motive"?
Motive is what prompts the activity
(is a form of manifestation of the need).
What is motivation?
Motivation - the process of motivating oneself and others
to activities to achieve personal goals.
So, there are several classifications of motives, I will list some of them.
2.1. Classification of motives by T.A. Ilyina
Motives directly prompting:
- depend on the personality and activities of the teacher, the selected material, methods.
- rely on involuntary attention, are based on positive emotions.
Perspectively motivating motives:
- are connected with the objective purposefulness of the student himself, the focus of his activities for the future.
- it is an interest in an object, in a certain activity, to which there is an inclination; desire to win the approval of comrades.
- motives can often be associated with negative emotions - fear of the teacher, parents.
- rely on voluntary attention associated with a consciously set goal.
Intellectual motives:
- interest in the process of mental activity;
- the desire to find an independent answer to a question, a sense of satisfaction from a successful decision, a sense of satisfaction from the very process of mental work;
- it is up to the teacher to awaken and maintain such interests, i.e. it is necessary to teach students the methods of mental activity, mastering general educational skills.
This division is very conditional, motives are intertwined with each other, pass one into another, unite; in addition, the ratio of motives varies with age; so in the lower grades - directly motivating motives prevail; in the older ones, they are promising and social.
2.2. Another variant of the classification of the motives of the doctrine by T.A. Ilyina
(based on two tendencies: to achieve success and avoid failure)
At the same time, the teacher's task is to develop students' desire for success, to encourage even small achievements, not to focus on failures.
2.3. A variant of the classification of motives according to A.K. Markova
(characterizing the attitude towards the activity itself)
According to the same classification, external motives are called social, and internal - cognitive(I will use this classification in the future).
2.4. Conclusions on the motives of the student's activity
- The leading motives of student activity can be both external and internal motives. Of course, we all want the activity of our students to be guided by internal motives, but external motivation can also lead to the setting of an activity goal, if only it is not a negative (fear of a bad grade), but a positive motive (a desire to get a good grade).
- It is extremely important to know the dynamics of the development of motives, and to ensure that external positive motives do not turn into external negative ones. With a properly delivered teaching, the opposite happens, interest in the teacher develops into interest in the subject and, later, in the science that he represents.
- In reality, each student is motivated by several motives, because learning activity is always is polymotivated.
2.5. A variant of the classification of motives according to E.P. Ilyin
To understand the specifics of the motive, it is necessary to correlate them with age. The age characteristics of children have an impact on motivation. For example, the readiness of schoolchildren to obey the requirements of adults sharply decreases from grade 4 to grade 7, which indicates a decrease in the role of external motivation and an increase in internal motivation. Unfortunately, this fact is rarely taken into account by both parents and teachers.
Now it will be interesting to see how the student's learning activity is motivated by age. Below I give a table showing the age and the age-appropriate motive (the table is compiled in an overview, and the motives are deliberately simplified, and some are not even included, since the main purpose of this table is to show a different principle of classification, as well as to show the relationship between age and motive ).
Table "Motives of educational activity"
|
Age / Group |
Motive |
|
First graders |
|
|
Younger schoolchildren |
|
|
Middle classes |
|
|
Senior classes |
|
As you can see from this table, the motive changes with age, and changes because needs change. I propose to look at the relationship between motive and need and make sure how unambiguously the need determines the motive.
The sequence of the emergence of needs in ontogenesis - from the bottom up (according to A. Maslow):
The sequence of the appearance of motives (compiled by the author of the study):
2.6. Motivation methods according to D.G. Levites
Psychologists and educators offer different ways to motivate. I settled on those that seem more acceptable to me in terms of using them in each lesson. These are the following ways:
I will dwell in more detail on each method of motivation, accompanying it with the following explanations: the essence of the method - through an aphorism; what this method gives, or what is its result; what this method “requires” for its best application; in addition, I accompanied each method with a photo of my own lessons, when I used one or another method. I’ll make a reservation right away that it turned out to be problematic to show the motivation methods “culture of communication” and “sense of humor” in the photo - not because I don’t use these methods, but because it is also impossible to photograph the smell of “Chanel No. 5”.
Learning motivation is a particular type of motivation included in learning activities, learning activities. It was found that educational activity is stimulated by a hierarchy of motives that have different origins and different psychological characteristics.
The motive of learning is the orientation of the student to various aspects of educational activity. If the student's activity is aimed at working with the studied object itself, then in these cases we can talk about different types of cognitive motives. If the student's activity is directed in the course of learning to relationships with other people, then we are talking about various social motives.
The basis of motivation related to the content and process of teachings is a cognitive need. The cognitive need arises from the need for external impressions and the need for activity and begins to manifest itself early, in the first days of a child's life.
For children of different ages and for every child, not all motives have the same incentive. Some of them are the main, leading, others - secondary, secondary, not having an independent meaning. The latter are always, one way or another, subordinated to the leading motives. In some cases, such a leading motive may be the desire to win the place of an excellent student in the class, in other cases - the desire to get a higher education, and thirdly - an interest in knowledge itself.
All of these teaching motives can be divided into two broad categories. Some of them are related to the content of the educational activity itself and the process of its implementation; others with the child's broader relationship with the environment. The first include the cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity and mastering new skills, skills and knowledge; others are related to the child's needs in communicating with other people, in their assessment and approval, with the student's desire to take a certain place in the system of social relations available to him.
The study found that both of these categories of motives are necessary for the successful implementation of not only educational, but also any other activity. The classification of motives is shown in Fig. 1.
It was also found that both categories of motives are characterized by specific features at different stages of the child's development. An analysis of the characteristics of motivation for learning in schoolchildren of different ages revealed a natural course of changes in motives for learning with age and the conditions conducive to this change.
In children entering school, broad social motives express the need arising in senior preschool age to take a new position among those around them, namely, the position of a schoolchild, and the desire to perform serious, socially significant activities associated with this position.
At the same time, children entering school also have a certain level of development of cognitive interests. At first, both those and other motives ensure a conscientious, one might even say, responsible attitude of students to learning at school. In the first and second grades, this attitude not only continues to persist, but even intensifies and develops.
Gradually, however, this positive attitude of young schoolchildren to learning begins to be lost. The tipping point is usually the third grade. Here, many children are already beginning to feel burdened by their school duties, their diligence decreases, and the teacher's authority falls noticeably. An essential reason for these changes is, first of all, that by grades 3-4, their need for the student's position is already satisfied and the student's position loses its emotional attractiveness for them. In this regard, the teacher also begins to take a different place in the life of children. He ceases to be the central figure in the class, able to determine both the behavior of children and their relationships. Gradually, schoolchildren develop their own sphere of life, there is a special interest in the opinion of their comrades, regardless of how the teacher looks at this or that. At this stage of development, not only the teacher's opinion, but also the attitude of the children's collective ensures that the child experiences a state of greater or lesser emotional well-being.
In adolescence, the child comes close to realizing his own motivation. In the beginning, awareness of one's motives and goals is carried out through their comparison with the motives and goals of their comrades. The adolescent correlates his motivation with the motivation of his peers, and all this taken together with the models and ideals adopted in society. By the end of adolescence, a persistent dominance of a motive may be observed.
A special study of the process of the formation of cognitive interests, also carried out in the laboratory of personality formation at the Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, made it possible to identify their specificity at different stages of the age development of schoolchildren. At the beginning of education, the cognitive interests of children are still rather unstable. They are characterized by a well-known situationality: children can listen with interest to the teacher's story, but this interest disappears along with its end. Interests of this kind can be characterized as episodic.
Let us turn to a more detailed consideration of how different in quality both cognitive and social motives of learning can be. Two groups of psychological characteristics of these motives can be distinguished. The correlation of the characteristics of motives is schematically shown in Fig. 1.
The first group of motivational characteristics - they are called content - is directly related to the content of educational activity. The second group of characteristics - they are conventionally called dynamic - characterizes the form, the dynamics of the expression of these motives; these features of motives are closer to the psychophysiological features of the child, the features of his nervous system. Each of the above motives has both content and dynamic characteristics.
the presence of a personal meaning of teaching for the student. In this case, the motive fulfills not only the role of a stimulus, but is also “meaning-forming,” that is, it gives the doctrine a personal meaning.
the presence of the effectiveness of the motive, that is, its real influence on the course of educational activity and the entire behavior of the child. The effectiveness of the motive is closely related to the first characteristic - the personal meaning of the teaching. If the motive does not have a real impact on the course of learning, although the child can name this motive, psychologists speak of “only known” (AN Leontiev) motives for learning. Most often, "known" motives are communicated by adults - a teacher, parents, and really acting motives arise as a result of actual inclusion in various types of activity;
the place of motive in the general structure of motivation. Each motive can be leading, dominant or secondary, subordinate.
independence of the emergence and manifestation of the motive. It can arise as an internal one in the course of independent educational work or only in a situation with the help of an adult, i.e. as external.
level of awareness of the motive. Sometimes schoolchildren are not only well aware, but also deliberately disguise their motives, either hiding behind indifference to educational work, or presenting fictional motives as genuine.
the extent to which the motive is spread to different types of activity. G.I. Shchukina suggested the following levels of interest in its localization:
amorphous, unclear localization, expressed in a general interest in learning “everything is interesting at school”;
wide localization - schoolchildren are happy to work on various educational subjects with assignments, show wide curiosity in the absence of depth of knowledge;
the presence of localized core interests, when schoolchildren are focused on one or two related or distant academic subjects. Core interests underlie the inclinations and abilities of a student, influence the choice of a profession, and are of great value to an individual.
If there are differences in the content of motives, then there are also features of their forms. They form the dynamic characteristics of motives.
The most important feature is the stability of motives. This is expressed in the fact that this or that motive is actualized quite constantly in all learning situations.
Shchukina G.I. described the following levels of motive stability:
Interest can be situational, limited to individual outbursts in emotionally attractive learning situations.
Relatively stable interest is associated with a certain range of subjects
A fairly stable interest is manifested in the fact that the child learns willingly, even in spite of unfavorable external stimuli.
Another feature of the form of manifestation of motives is their emotional coloring - modality. The motivation for learning can be negative or positive. Negative motivation is understood as the student's motivation caused by the awareness of the troubles that may arise if he does not study. Positive motivation is associated with achieving academic success, mastering new knowledge, and maintaining good relationships with others.
Other forms of manifestation of motives are expressed in the strength of the motive, its severity, the speed of occurrence.
The forms of expression of the motives of learning should always be in the field of vision of the teacher.
Now the motivation for learning is considered as a complex multicomponent and multiphase process, in which various (volitional, cognitive and emotional) components are involved.
In recent years, there has been a development of a tendency to approach educational activities as multi-motivated. This approach is reflected in the works of A.K. Markova, who considers the formation of motivation as the complication of "the structure of the motivational sphere, the motives included in it, the establishment of new, more mature, sometimes contradictory relationships between them." In this regard, educational psychology uses the classification of educational motives from the point of view of their personal significance, the function performed in the system of educational motivation.
Sense-forming motives are distinguished, which not only stimulate activity, but also give it a personal meaning and motives-stimuli, which, acting in parallel with the first, serve as additional incentives. Sense-forming motives, they are also leading (NF Talyzina), dominant (RR Bibrikh, IA Vasiliev), prevailing (VE Milman) determine the direction of the entire motivational system. If the student is satisfied with the way his sense-forming motive is realized in the activity of the teaching, then he will strive to continue it, despite the fact that at some point it will not allow the motive-stimulus to be realized.
An important role in the study of educational motivation is played by its classification in terms of levels of formation (measures, degree of development of motives and motivation in general). The introduction of the concept of levels of formation (development) of educational motivation involves the coverage of a number of fundamental issues:
1) by what criteria are the levels distinguished and what is the characteristic of each level?
2) what indicators can be used to assess the level of formation of motivation among the students themselves?
3) with the help of what diagnostic techniques, it is possible to identify the features of the indicators and thereby determine the student's belonging to one or another level?
The most detailed problem of the levels of development of motivation for learning was developed by A.K. Markova. In essence, the typology of this kind presented for the first time contains six levels, six "stages of student involvement in the learning process." It is based on two criteria: the type of attitude towards learning and the nature of the dominant motives. The characteristics of goal-setting (what goals the student sets and implements in learning), emotions during learning (how he experiences the learning process), the state of the ability to learn (his ability to learn and learn) act as indicators of the formation of educational motivation. The author's undoubted merit is the compilation of a rather detailed description of each level, which reflects the peculiarities of the interaction of the nature of the student's motivation with the type of his attitude to learning and the state of educational activity in general.
The program for studying the level of educational motivation should include, according to the author, several blocks: actually motivational, target, emotional, cognitive. To evaluate each of them separately, A.K. Markova suggests using a set of diagnostic techniques. Observation under normal conditions and conditions of a psychological and pedagogical experiment, conversation, creating a situation of real choice, projective methods are called the main ones.
However, A.K. Marked indicators of levels are presented in a row, and as a result, it remains unclear the question of in which cases the discrepancy of signs denotes a particular level. Unfortunately, we also failed to find a methodology aimed at identifying the level of development of educational motivation as a whole, which would solve the problem of comparing numerous parameters and deriving the final grade for their various combinations. And yet, proposed by A.K. Markovaya typology of levels of educational motivation, the program of its study is an important step in the development of the problem.
N.V. Elfimova does not set the task of identifying the levels of formation of educational motives directly. At the same time, her works reveal in detail the issues of identifying and substantiating the system of indicators of motivation for learning and the selection of methods that diagnose these indicators.
The following are considered as indicators:
1) the place of learning in the system of personally significant activities of a student (is learning a meaningful activity for a student);
2) the role of the teacher among subjects personally significant for the student (is the teacher a significant subject that has a direct impact on the motivation of learning);
3) attitude to learning (a sign of attitude; the ratio of social and cognitive motives of the student's teaching in the hierarchy);
4) the student's attitude to school subjects (definition of "favorite" and "unloved" subjects).
Speaking about the “norm” in relation to the selected indicators, N.V. Elfimova, in our opinion, indirectly characterizes the highest level of development of motivation for the teaching of a younger student. What are its features? With regard to the first indicator, the norm will undoubtedly be the case when learning is one of the types of personally significant activity. First of all, the teacher should act as a personally significant subject for the student. Obviously, the attitude towards learning should be positive. Determining the norm for the ratio of social and cognitive motives of learning, N.V. Elfimova relies on the position put forward in Russian psychology by L.I. Bozovic, and believes that cognitive motives should dominate the hierarchy along with social ones. For the latter indicator, the norm can be considered a positive attitude of students, first of all, towards the "basic" academic subjects.
Page 1
Learning motivation is a particular type of motivation included in learning activities, learning activities. It was found that educational activity is stimulated by a hierarchy of motives that have different origins and different psychological characteristics.
The motive of learning is the orientation of the student to various aspects of educational activity. If the student's activity is aimed at working with the studied object itself, then in these cases we can talk about different types of cognitive motives. If the student's activity is directed in the course of learning to relationships with other people, then we are talking about various social motives.
The basis of motivation related to the content and process of teachings is a cognitive need. The cognitive need arises from the need for external impressions and the need for activity and begins to manifest itself early, in the first days of a child's life.
For children of different ages and for every child, not all motives have the same incentive. Some of them are the main, leading, others - secondary, secondary, not having an independent meaning. The latter are always, one way or another, subordinated to the leading motives. In some cases, such a leading motive may be the desire to win the place of an excellent student in the class, in other cases - the desire to get a higher education, and thirdly - an interest in knowledge itself.
All of these teaching motives can be divided into two broad categories. Some of them are related to the content of the educational activity itself and the process of its implementation; others with the child's broader relationship with the environment. The first include the cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity and mastering new skills, skills and knowledge; others are related to the child's needs in communicating with other people, in their assessment and approval, with the student's desire to take a certain place in the system of social relations available to him.
The study found that both of these categories of motives are necessary for the successful implementation of not only educational, but also any other activity. The classification of motives is shown in Fig. 1.
It was also found that both categories of motives are characterized by specific features at different stages of the child's development. An analysis of the characteristics of motivation for learning in schoolchildren of different ages revealed a natural course of changes in motives for learning with age and the conditions conducive to this change.
In children entering school, broad social motives express the need arising in senior preschool age to take a new position among those around them, namely, the position of a schoolchild, and the desire to perform serious, socially significant activities associated with this position.
At the same time, children entering school also have a certain level of development of cognitive interests. At first, both those and other motives ensure a conscientious, one might even say, responsible attitude of students to learning at school. In the first and second grades, this attitude not only continues to persist, but even intensifies and develops.
Gradually, however, this positive attitude of young schoolchildren to learning begins to be lost. The tipping point is usually the third grade. Here, many children are already beginning to feel burdened by their school duties, their diligence decreases, and the teacher's authority falls noticeably. An essential reason for these changes is, first of all, that by grades 3-4, their need for the student's position is already satisfied and the student's position loses its emotional attractiveness for them. In this regard, the teacher also begins to take a different place in the life of children. He ceases to be the central figure in the class, able to determine both the behavior of children and their relationships. Gradually, schoolchildren develop their own sphere of life, there is a special interest in the opinion of their comrades, regardless of how the teacher looks at this or that. At this stage of development, not only the teacher's opinion, but also the attitude of the children's collective ensures that the child experiences a state of greater or lesser emotional well-being.
In adolescence, the child comes close to realizing his own motivation. In the beginning, awareness of one's motives and goals is carried out through their comparison with the motives and goals of their comrades. The adolescent correlates his motivation with the motivation of his peers, and all this taken together with the models and ideals adopted in society. By the end of adolescence, a persistent dominance of a motive may be observed.
The motive of learning is the orientation of the student to various aspects of educational activity. For example, if the student's activity is aimed at working with the studied object itself (linguistic, mathematical, biological, etc.), then most often in these cases we can talk about different types cognitive motives. If the student's activity is directed in the course of the study on relationships with other people, then we are talking, as a rule, about various social motives. In other words, some students are more motivated by the process of learning in the course of learning, others - by relationships with other people in the course of learning.
Accordingly, it is customary to distinguish between two large groups of motives;
1) cognitive motives associated with the content of educational activity and the process of its implementation;
2) social motives associated with various social interactions of the student with other people.
These groups of motives are described in the psychological literature. The first large group of motives can be divided into several subgroups:
1) broad cognitive motives, consisting in the orientation of schoolchildren to mastering new knowledge. They also vary in level. These levels are determined by the depth of interest in knowledge. It can be interest in new entertaining facts, phenomena, or interest in the essential properties of phenomena, in the first deductive conclusions, or interest in patterns in educational material, in theoretical principles, in key ideas, etc.;
2) educational and cognitive motives, consisting in the orientation of schoolchildren to assimilate the methods of acquiring knowledge: interests in the methods of independent acquisition of knowledge, in the methods of scientific cognition, in the methods of self-regulation of educational work, the rational organization of their educational work;
3) motives for self-education, consisting in the orientation of schoolchildren to self-improvement of the methods of acquiring knowledge.
The second large group of motives - social motives - also falls into several subgroups:
1) broad social motives, consisting in the desire to gain knowledge in order to be useful to the Motherland, society, the desire to fulfill their duty, in the understanding of the need to learn and in the sense of responsibility. Here, the importance of the motives for the awareness of social necessity and obligation is of great importance.
The desire to prepare well for the chosen profession can also be attributed to broad social motives;
2) narrow social, so called positional motives, consisting in the desire to take a certain position, a place in relations with others, to get their approval, to earn their authority.
3) social motives, called motives of social cooperation, consisting in the fact that the student not only wants to communicate and interact with other people, but also seeks to understand, analyze the ways, forms of his cooperation and relationships with the teacher and classmates, constantly improve these forms. This motive is an important basis for self-education, self-improvement of the individual.
Thus, the cognitive motive ensures the collectivist orientation of the student in the event that the student seeks to achieve positive results by the whole team, “hurts his soul” for the performance of the class, and not only for his own successes. And vice versa. Let us imagine an extreme case that a student has well-developed cognitive motives, even his mature forms (motives of self-education), and he is constantly working on himself. But these motives may ultimately have an individualistic orientation if they are closed on solving narrow problems of personal well-being and prosperity, achieving individual success in future professional activities without due return to society.
Social motives, especially broad social motives of duty, provide a solid foundation of collectivism, responsibility for a common cause. But another case can be imagined. The student has formed social motives, but only in one of their expressions - in the desire to achieve priority among comrades, to strive for prestigious professional work related to material well-being. Such social motives also lead to an egoistic orientation and defective development of the individual as a whole.
Thus, not in itself the presence of social or cognitive motives, but precisely their quality, determines the essence of the student's personality and its orientation.
The first group of motivational characteristics - they are called meaningful - directly related (as the name implies) with the content of the student's educational activities. The second group of characteristics - they are conventionally called dynamic - characterizes not so much the content as the form, the dynamics of the expression of these motives; these features of motives are closer to the psychophysiological features of the child, the features of his nervous system. Each of the above-mentioned cognitive and social motives has both content and dynamic characteristics.
I) availability personal meaning teachings for the student. In this case, they say that the motive of teaching not only fulfills the role of a stimulus, but is also "meaning-forming" for a given student, that is, it gives his teaching a personal meaning. The role of meaning as an internal attitude of the student to learning was discussed above;
2) availability effectiveness motive, that is, its real influence on the course of educational activity and the entire behavior of the child. The effectiveness of the motive is closely related to the first characteristic, the personal meaning of the teaching. For if a motive has a personal significance for a student, then, as a rule, it is also effective. This is manifested in the activity of the student himself, in his initiative, in the maturity and development of all components of educational activity. If this or that motive does not have a real impact on the course of learning, although the child can name this motive, psychologists speak of “only known” (A. N. Leont'ev) motives for learning. Most often, "known" motives are communicated to the student by adults - by the teacher, by the parents, and the actually acting motives arise as a result of the actual inclusion of the student in various types of activity;
3) place motive in general structure motivation. Every motive can be leading, dominant or secondary, subordinates. Of course, we must strive to ensure that mature types of social and cognitive motives - the motives of duty to society and the people around them, motives of self-education and self-education - become dominant in the schoolchild;
4) independence the emergence and manifestation of the motive. It can occur as interior in the course of independent educational work or only in a situation of adult assistance, that is, as external. For example, a student may have a motive for mastering new methods of acquiring knowledge, but it is updated only when the teacher reminds him, when he creates appropriate learning situations for him. It must be borne in mind that the motive is always, on the one hand, an internal characteristic of the student's consciousness, his motivation for activity. On the other hand, the motivation can come from the outside, from another person. If, without the control and reminder of the adult, the student's motive is not actualized, then we can say that this motive is still external to the student. When analyzing the ratio of external and internal motives, it is important to keep in mind one more nuance. Motive social approval, for example, a good mark is an external motive for the content of the learning process, but is not an external motive for the student himself;
5) level awareness motive. Schoolchildren do not always know how to be aware of their motives; this ability may not arise at the secondary school level. But sometimes schoolchildren, especially adolescents, are not only well aware, but also deliberately mask their motives, either hiding behind indifference to educational work, or presenting fictional motives as genuine. The teacher must bear in mind that the student should be brought to the realization of the leading, socially significant motives. But there always remain unconscious motives, which really also have an impact on the behavior of every person;
b) degree spreading motive for different types of activities, types of educational subjects, forms of educational assignments. Let us cite the levels of interest in its localization described in the literature: amorphous, unclear localization, expressed in the statement that “everything is interesting at school”, in the general interest in learning, which requires external motives for its confirmation; wide localization, when schoolchildren are happy to work on various academic subjects and assignments, actively seek additional knowledge outside the school curriculum, show wide curiosity in the absence of depth of knowledge; the presence of localized core interests, when schoolchildren are focused on one or two related or distant academic subjects. Core interests underlie the inclinations and abilities of a student, influence the choice of a profession, and are of great value to an individual. The most favorable are broad interests with a pronounced dominant.
If there are differences in the content of motives, then there are also features of their forms. They form the dynamic characteristics of motives.
1. The first and most important feature is sustainability motives. This is expressed in the fact that this or that motive is actualized quite constantly in all learning situations or in most of them. Of course, we must strive to ensure that socially valuable motives become a stable personal education of the student.
2. Another feature of the form of manifestation of motives is their emotional coloring, modality. Psychologists talk about negative and positive motivation learning. Negative motivation refers to the student's motivations caused by the awareness of certain inconveniences and troubles that may arise if he does not study (reminders, bad grades and reprimands at school, threats and punishments from parents, unpleasant experiences caused by reproaches from others). Positive motivation is associated with the fulfillment of a socially significant duty by the student to study, with the achievement of success in academic work, with the acquisition of new knowledge and methods of obtaining it, with the maintenance of good relations with others. Below in the section on emotions will be shown the need in the course of training a certain ratio of many positive and some negative emotions.
3. Other forms of manifestation of motives are also expressed in strength motive, his severity, rapidity of occurrence etc. They are found in, for example, how long a student can sit at work, how many tasks he can complete, driven by a given motive, etc. All the features of the flow of motives are associated with their substantive features - effectiveness, dominance among others motives.
Let us highlight the positive and negative aspects of the motivation of the teaching of a younger student and its dynamics during this age. The general positive attitude of the child towards school, the breadth of his interests, and curiosity are noted as favorable features of motivation. The breadth of interests of junior schoolchildren is manifested in the fact that they are interested in many phenomena of the world around them, which are not even included in the curriculum of even secondary school. The breadth of these interests is also manifested in the not always taken into account the need of junior schoolchildren for creative games, especially for the plots of their favorite books and films. In playing these plots, the social interests of primary schoolchildren are realized. Curiosity is a form of manifestation of broad mental activity of primary schoolchildren.
The motivation of younger students also has a number of negative characteristics that impede learning.
So, the motives and interests of younger students:
They are not effective enough, since they themselves do not support learning activities for a long time;
Unstable, that is, situational (learning can quickly get bored, cause fatigue, interest fade away);
They are little aware of what is manifested in the student's misunderstanding, what and why he likes in this subject;
Poorly generalized, that is, directed at individual aspects of the doctrine, at individual facts or methods of action;
All these features lead to a decrease in the level of motivation for the teaching of a younger student.
As the reasons for the decline in interest in the teachings of V.A. Sukhomlinsky called the teacher's abuse a bad grade, reducing the child's desire to learn and his confidence in his abilities. Finally, it should be noted that a slight decrease in motivation for learning is natural: the preschooler's need to learn is satisfied, emotional attractiveness is removed, difficulties and failures that arise also reduce interest in learning. Goal setting at primary school age is characterized by the fact that the student:
Ready to accept the goals set by the teacher;
Learns to determine the importance and consistency of goals both in the lesson and in the independent organization of their time;
Can already independently outline a system of intermediate goals on the way to the goal set by the teacher.
The weakness of the processes of goal formation at this age is reflected in the inability to subordinate oneself to the goals of an adult for a sufficiently long time. They lack the ability to compare the intended goals with their capabilities, which is one of the reasons for the negative attitude towards learning and school.
Let us highlight the features of a teenager that contribute to the development of motivation for learning and hinder it. Favorable features of motivation at this age are:
- "the need for adulthood" - unwillingness to consider oneself a child, the desire to take a new life position in relation to the world, to another person, to oneself; the adolescent's special susceptibility to mastering the methods and norms of adult behavior;
General activity of the adolescent, his willingness to engage in various activities with adults and peers;
The need for self-expression and self-affirmation, the desire to realize oneself as a person, to evaluate oneself;
The adolescent's desire for independence;
Broadening horizons, broad interests and their diversity;
An increase in the certainty and stability of interests;
Development of the desire for improvement in various areas of creativity (music, literature, technology).
Negative features of adolescent motivation:
Immaturity of the adolescent's assessment of himself and another person;
The manifestation of external indifference to the opinions of others;
Negative attitude towards ready-made knowledge, simple and easy questions, towards reproductive activities;
Instability of interests, their change, alternation;
Awareness of the positive motives of learning and unawareness of the negative.
Can independently set goals and plan their work;
Knows how to outline an independent hierarchy of goals for himself, to determine the sequence of their achievement;
Knows how to set flexible goals, change them in accordance with the conditions;
A habit is formed for a long time to keep the goals of their actions and to subordinate their behavior to them.
Consider the motivation for learning in high school age. The development of motivation for learning at this age is facilitated by a number of characteristics of a high school student:
The need for self-determination in life and the turning of plans into the future, comprehension from these positions of the present;
The need for self-knowledge of oneself as a person, assessment of one's capabilities when choosing a profession;
Interest in various forms of self-education;
Clearly expressed orientation of motives and goals;
Stability of interests and motives;
Formation of goal-setting, development of the ability to make decisions;
There is a unity of the procedural and effective sides in the motivation of learning.
Negative features of high school student motivation:
A persistent interest in some subjects to the detriment of the assimilation of others;
Saturation with the uniformity and routine of everyday school life;
Dissatisfaction with the monotony of forms and methods of teaching;
Negative attitude towards the forms of control on the part of the teacher and parents;
Striving, to a certain extent, for conformism.
Studying learning motivation, the central question becomes the question of the types of motives for learning.
The motive of learning is understood as the orientation of the student's activity (activity) to certain aspects of educational activity. There are several classifications of teaching motives. According to L.I. Bozovic, the motives of teaching are divided into external (not related to the educational process) and internal (derived from various characteristics of the teaching). A.N. Leont'ev distinguishes "motives-stimuli" and "meaning-forming" motives. “Some motives, prompting activity, at the same time give it a personal meaning; we will call them meaningful motives. Others, coexisting with them, playing the role of incentive factors (positive or negative) - sometimes acutely emotional, affective, - are deprived of a meaning-forming function; we will conventionally call such motives motives - incentives ”(AN Leont'ev). Also A.N. Leont'ev's motives of teaching are divided into "known" ("understood") and "really acting".
The most complete classification of the motives of teaching was proposed by A.K. Markova. She distinguishes two groups of motives for learning: cognitive motives and social motives.
Cognitive motives are aimed at the process of cognition, increasing the effectiveness of its results - knowledge, abilities, skills, as well as the methods of cognition and the acquisition of knowledge, techniques and methods of educational work, at increasing the effectiveness of these methods and methods of cognition. Their levels are: broad cognitive motives - focus on knowledge; educational and cognitive - focus on methods of acquiring knowledge; motives of self-education - focus on ways of self-replenishment of knowledge.
Social motives characterize the student's activity in relation to certain aspects of interaction with another person in the course of learning, to the results of joint activities and the methods of these interactions, to increase the effectiveness of the results and methods of these interactions. Their levels are: broad social motives - duty, responsibility; narrow social or positional motives - the desire for the approval of others; motives of social cooperation - the desire to master the ways of interaction with people around.
A number of researchers (L.I.Bozhovich, P.M. Yakobson) postulate the need for the presence of both components (cognitive and social motives) for the effectiveness of educational activity.
General trends in the development of ideas about the motivation of learning in Russian psychology consist in a gradual transition from an undivided to a differentiated understanding of the motivation for learning; from the idea of a motive as an “engine” that precedes an activity, to its definition as an important, internal psychological characteristic of the activity itself. The differentiated approach involves the allocation of meaningful and dynamic characteristics that the studied psychological impulse possesses.
A.K. Markova highlights the content and dynamic characteristics of the learning motive:
Dynamic characteristics: stability; expressiveness and strength; switchability; emotional coloring; modality.
Another trend in the study of learning motivation is a formative approach, which involves the definition of conditions that affect the formation of learning motivation in the aggregate of its content and dynamic characteristics.
Starting education at a university, a former student faces a number of changes: first, the level of external control over the student's activities is sharply reduced; secondly, the structure of the educational activity itself is changing - the motives of learning are supplemented and closely intertwined with professional motives; thirdly, there is an entry into a new social community - "students". In the light of such changes, the question of motivation for students' learning activities becomes especially important.
Different authors name different motives for entering a university, which largely depends on the perspective of studying this issue, the socio-economic situation in the state. The main motives for entering a university are: the desire to be in the circle of student youth, the great social significance of the profession and the wide scope of its application, the conformity of the profession to interests and inclinations and its creative potential. There are differences in the importance of motives among girls and boys. Girls more often note the great social significance of the profession, the wide scope of its application, the opportunity to work in large cities and research centers, the desire to participate in student amateur performances, and the good material security of the profession. Young men, on the other hand, more often note that the profession they choose meets their interests and inclinations. They also refer to family traditions.
In the motivation of the educational activity of students, the actual educational and professional components are constantly combined. In this regard, in the structure of teaching, it is possible to distinguish the actual motives of learning and professional motives as "internal motives that determine the direction of a person's activity in professional behavior in general and a person's orientation towards different aspects of the professional activity itself." Professional motives are also defined as "motives that push the subject to improve his activities - its ways, means, forms, methods, etc."
Within the framework of the activity approach, D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov's basic activity of students is educational and professional. Her motivation, according to T.I. Lyakh, includes two groups of motives: educational and professional and social. Each of these groups in its development goes through three levels. Levels of formation of educational and professional motives (from the lowest to the highest): broad educational and professional; educational and professional; the motive of professional self-education. Levels of formation of social motives of educational and professional activity in the university (from lowest to highest): broad social motive; narrow social, positional motive; motives of professional cooperation. By the end of training at a pedagogical university, under the influence of the system of educational work of the university, senior students should form motives of professional self-education from the group of educational and professional motives, and motives of professional cooperation from the group of social motives.
Research carried out by A.N. Pechnikov, G.A. Mukhina, showed that the leading educational motives for students are "professional" and "personal prestige", less significant are "pragmatic" (to get a diploma of higher education) and "cognitive". True, at different courses the role of dominant motives changes. In the first year, the leading motive is "professional", in the second - "personal prestige", in the third and fourth years - both of these motives, in the fourth - also "pragmatic". The success of training was largely influenced by "professional" and "cognitive" motives. “Pragmatic” motives were mainly characteristic of poorly performing students.
Similar data were obtained by other authors. M.V. Vovchik-Blakitnaya, at the first stage of the applicant's transition to student forms of life and learning, singles out prestigious motive as the leading motive (asserting oneself in the status of a student), in second place is cognitive interest, and in third place is professional and practical motive.
F.M. Rakhmatullina did not study the motive of "prestige", but revealed general social motives (understanding of the high social significance of higher education). According to her, in all courses the "professional" motive took the first place in importance. The second place in the first year was given to the "cognitive" motive, but in subsequent courses a general social motive came to this place, pushing the "cognitive" motive to third place. The “utilitarian” (pragmatic) motive was ranked fourth in all courses; Characteristically, from junior to senior years his rating fell, while the rating of the "professional" motive, as well as the "general social" one, increased. The “professional”, “cognitive” and “general social” motives were more pronounced among the well-performing students than among the average students, and the “utilitarian” motive was more pronounced among the latter than among the former. It is also characteristic that the “cognitive” motive took the second place among the well-performing students, and the third among the students with the average academic performance.
R.S. Weisman observed the dynamics of change from the 1st to the 4th year of the motives of creative achievement, "formal-academic" achievement and the "need for achievement" among students of the Faculty of Psychology. By the motive of creative achievement, the author understands the desire to solve any scientific or technical problem and to success in scientific activity. The motive of "formal-academic" achievement is understood by him as motivation for a mark, good academic performance; "The need to achieve" means a vivid expression of both motives. R.S. Weissman revealed that the motive for creative achievement and the need for achievement increase from 3rd to 4th year, and the motive of "formal-academic" achievement decreases from 2nd to 3-4th years. At the same time, the motive for creative achievement in all courses significantly prevailed over the motive for "formal-academic" achievement.
On the basis of the general motivation of educational activity (professional, cognitive, pragmatic, social and social and personally prestigious), students develop a certain attitude towards different academic subjects. It is conditioned by: the importance of the subject for professional training; interest in a particular branch of knowledge and in this subject as part of it; the quality of teaching (satisfaction with classes in this subject); a measure of the difficulty of mastering this subject based on one's own abilities; relationship with the teacher of the subject. All these motivators can be in a relationship of interaction or competition and have a different effect on learning, therefore, a complete picture of the motives of learning activity can be obtained only by identifying the significance for each student of all these components of a complex motivational structure. This will make it possible to establish the motivational tension in the given subject, i.e. the sum of the components of the motive of educational activity: the more components determine this activity, the more motivational stress he has.
In recent years, the understanding of psychologists and teachers of the role of positive motivation for learning in ensuring the successful mastering of knowledge and skills has increased. At the same time, it was revealed that high positive motivation can play the role of a compensating factor in the case of insufficiently high abilities; however, this factor does not work in the opposite direction - no high level of abilities can compensate for the absence of an educational motive or its low severity, cannot lead to significant success in studies (A.A. Rean).
Awareness of the high importance of the motive for learning for successful studies led to the formation of the principle of motivational support of the educational process (O.S. Grebenyuk). The importance of this principle stems from the fact that in the process of studying at a university, the strength of the motive for learning and mastering the chosen specialty decreases. According to A.M. Vasilkov and S.S. Ivanov, obtained from interviews with cadets of the military medical academy, the reasons for this are: unsatisfactory prospects for work, service, shortcomings in the organization of the educational process, everyday life and leisure, shortcomings of educational work. They also showed that students who are distinguished by independence and a tendency towards authoritarianism and rigidity show a more significant decrease in their professional orientation.
A.I. Gebos highlights the factors that contribute to the formation of students' positive motive for learning: awareness of the immediate and final goals of learning; awareness of the theoretical and practical significance of the acquired knowledge; emotional form of presentation of educational material; showing "promising lines" in the development of scientific concepts; professional orientation of educational activities; selection of tasks that create problem situations in the structure of educational activities; the presence of curiosity and "cognitive psychological climate" in the study group.
The question of the types of motives for learning is central in the study of learning motivation.
There are several classifications of the motives of teaching, which largely depends on the different perspectives of studying this issue, the socio-economic situation in the state. The main motives for entering the university are such as: the desire to be in the circle of student youth, the great social significance of the profession and the wide scope of its application, the conformity of the profession with interests and inclinations and its creative possibilities. For girls and boys, the significance of motives is significantly different.
In the structure of the teaching, the actual motives of learning and professional motives will be singled out as "internal motives that determine the direction of a person's activity in professional behavior in general and a person's orientation towards different aspects of professional activity itself."
In the process of teaching the adult contingent, with all the variety of structural approaches to the formation of motivation for learning, their semantic dominant should be focused on the motive for achieving success.
The long-supported motive for achieving success in working with an adult audience is manifested in such a way that after failure, the student is inclined to show more activity (add activity) in order to increase academic performance.
