How Feelings and Beliefs Affect Student Motivation and Engagement
Students thrive in school when they are engaged in their own learning. Engaged students are active participants in the learning process: They use deep strategies to make meaning of ideas and concepts, turn homework in on time, and hold positive feelings about their learning experiences. Successful students believe they are capable of learning and view failures as temporary set-backs. They exhibit high levels of self-efficacy for learning and attribute success and failure to effort rather than outside forces such as the ‘teacher’ or ‘difficulty of the task.’
Student engagement is a key factor for learning. Students who are engaged make an effortful investment in learning: they are active participants in the learning process at the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement dimensions. The emotional dimension of engagement is defined as student feelings about learning and is linked to a willingness to do work. It is characterized as enjoyment in the learning or activity at hand. It can also reflect a student’s feelings of anticipation, as in looking forward to lessons. The cognitive dimension of engagement is defined as being personally invested and having a willingness to exert effort to master ideas and skills, for example, using deep strategies and creating more connections among ideas (Fredricks et al., 2004 Fredricks & McColskey, 2012). While, cognitive engagement is less observable and more indicative of the internal processes taking place during learning, the behavioral dimension of engagement is defined as participation. More specifically it is units of actions specific to learning (Christenson, Reschly, & Wylie, 2012; Fredricks et al. 2008) such as completing homework on time, listening in class, or keeping work organized.
Engaged students are motivated students...It is important to recognize motivation as a precursor rather than a part of engagement. Motivation is the intent to learn; engagement is the action of learning (Christenson et al. 2012; Lam, Wong, Yang, & Liu, 2012). That is, engagement is preceded by motivation, the desire to engage or as a goal-directed process that leads students to initiate actions for learning and to sustain those actions to complete a chosen task. Motivation variables include perceived instrumentality, future orientation, valuing learning, feeling a sense of belonging, having an interest in a subject or school and positive self-efficacy for learning and causal attributions. Of these, self-efficacy and causal attributions have been found to play a pivotal role in initiating human behaviors such as motivation and engagement.
Two ways to increase Motivation and Engagement
From the social cognitive view, engagement is considered to be dependent on students’ beliefs about their capability to learn, self-efficacy, (Martin & Rimm-Kaufmann, 2015) and the types of reasons they give for their success or failure, causal attributions (Wolters et al., 2013).
Enhancing Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a “key determinant of individuals’ motivation, learning and self-regulation” (Schunk, 2012, p. 109). High self-efficacy results in improved homework behaviors, effective learning approaches, the ability to set appropriately challenging goals, and academic engagement (Kitsantas et al., 2011; Martin, 2012). Self-efficacy is enhanced with instructional practices that promote mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and positive physiological states (Bandura, 1997).
Mastery experience is believed to be most influential on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986, 1997). Students evaluate and interpret the results of their actions through processes inside the self-regulation model of learning: goal setting, choosing strategies, monitoring progress, and evaluating results (Zimmerman et al. 1992). In particular, mastery experience that results from success or failure in challenging tasks is the most powerful predictor of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). Doing an error analysis after assessments is one way to help students enhance self-efficacy. When students are taught to look for and recognize mistake patterns and correct them they are more likely to hold higher beliefs about their ability to learn (self-efficacy for learning).
Observing others also influences self-efficacy in that individuals gauge their capabilities in comparison to others performing like tasks (Schunk, 1994). Vicarious learning occurs through observation and imitation, and also influences beliefs, cognition, emotions, skills, strategies, and behaviors. Teaching strategies that encourage learning through observation are “I do, we do, you do” lessons, student presentations, demonstrations and discussions of successful and unsuccessful final products, and collaborative work that is expertly planned and facilitated so that all students are responsible participants.
Another source of self-efficacy is verbal or social persuasion. The best type of persuasion encourages individuals that success is measured by personal growth rather than a comparison of scores with others (Ryan, Gheen & Midgley, 1998). Words of encouragement framed to focus on effort and capability can encourage and motivate students to increase their belief in their own ability to succeed.
The fourth source of self-efficacy is individuals’ emotional and physiological states. Individuals’ reactions to tasks form their precepts of self-efficacy: feelings of anger, anxiety, dread, or apprehension reduce self-efficacy; while the state of well-being increases self-efficacy (Usher & Pajares, 2008). Some strategies for helping students keep a healthy level of well-being when they are struggling are:
Listen to their story. Allow students to express what they are feeling and thinking without judgement.
Ask “powerful” questions to help them think more deeply about their feelings and solutions. Powerful questions are open-ended, trigger self-reflection, reveal choicesm, elicit a different idea of what’s possible, weigh the costs and benefits of a choice or action, establish the level of importance (scale of 1-10), encourage shifts in perspective, unpack assumptions or limiting beliefs, incite action, and promote accountability & follow through.
Revising Causal Attributions
Causal attribution is a concept within attribution theory that is concerned with how learners explain the causes of success and failure that encompasses beliefs surrounding competence and control (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2006; Weiner, 1979, 2008, 2010; Wolters et al. 2013). Causal attributions are the explanations students give for why they were successful or unsuccessful. Causal attributions have implications over students subsequent motivation and engagement in learning. Attribution for failure is a belief associated with the concept of ability (Weiner, 1979). Failures can be attributed to either internal or external factors. External factors include blaming the teacher, luck, or difficulty of the material; internal factors include lack of effort or ability (Dweck & Leggett,1988). Several studies have shown that the interactions between the personal beliefs of self-efficacy and attributions influence and are influenced by engagement, as characterized by learning strategies, persistence, and taking enjoyment from participation in learning or an activity (Ainley & Ainley, 2011; Hampden-Thompson & Bennett, 2013; Martin et al., 2014; Wolters, Fan, & Daugherty, 2013). According to Weiner (1979), attribution is initiated when learners search for an understanding of “why” they succeeded or failed. This process is more likely to occur in learners after failure (Stupnisky, Stewart, Daniels, & Perry, 2011; Weiner, 1979). Attribution for failure affects self-efficacy, motivation, and engagement.
The types of attributions applied to failures influence learners’ beliefs and perceptions, in addition to their emotions and behavioral engagement. For instance, a learner’s affect (e.g., pride or shame) is influenced by the attribution of failure to internal (e.g., effort) or external (e.g., luck) causes. The choices of tasks, level of effort, persistence, and level of achievement are a function of learners’ perception of competence and control, and are linked to students’ self-efficacy (Wolters et al., 2013). Findings from an intervention study by Blackwell et al. (2007) indicate that responses to failure establishes a pattern of responses that shape students’ motivation, engagement, and in turn affects their academic trajectories. Therefore, it is important to help students revise their attributional thinking.
Strategies for shifting attribution for failure from the mindset that outcomes are uncontrollable, stable (not malleable), and externally determined to a mindset that one is capable of organizing and taking appropriate actions to attain a goal include:
Giving students immediate constructive feedback on assessments focused on finding error patterns for revision.
Encourage students to view failure with the mindset that it is within students’ control to change future outcomes.
Assist students in figuring out why they were unsuccessful through academic coaching (powerful questioning)
Increase positive student beliefs by increasing students’ self-regulatory processes of goal setting, choosing effective strategies, progress monitoring, and evaluating outcomes to revise goals or to set new goals (Zimmerman, 2002).
The challenge for educators is to develop educational experiences that account for students’ unique personalities, beliefs, and learning needs by supporting students’ beliefs about their ability to learn (self-efficacy) and helping them to revise maladaptive attributions (reasons) for failure in order to positively impact their cognitive, behavioral, and emotional energies toward learning.
