Wentzel,Kathryn R & Brophy,Jere E (2014) Motivating students to learn Routledge (New York & London) isbn 978‐0‐415‐89352‐7 301 pp £39.99 http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415893527/

The authors of Motivating students to learn offer teachers evidence‐based classroom strategies to motivate their students. This fourth edition draws comprehensively on current psychological and educational research on student motivation and extrapolates this to implications for teaching practice in the classroom. This book's aim is primarily school teachers but it may also be of interest to people in further and higher education. If you think this book's content could be relevant, I suggest you borrow a copy to decide whether it's worth buying. Sara Hammer     

Non-Athletic High-School Contests: 40,000 Orchestras 600,000 Debaters

Great teachers understand the fundamental difference between motivation and inspiration: motivation is self-focused and inspiration is other focused. Exceptional teachers guide students to greatness by inspiring them to discover where their talents and passions intersect. For today's besieged classroom teacher, the desire to motivate students often springs from a place of self-concern: "I want to change your behavior with a reward or incentive so that, if you meet the targets or goals I set for you, this will help me meet my own needs and goals." Students are highly motivated to perform when they first come to school. The question is not "how can students be motivated?" but rather, "how can educators be deterred from diminishing—even destroying—student motivation and morale through their policies and practices?"     

Coherence,contradiction, and the development of school science identities

This study demonstrates the potential for collaborative research among participants in local settings to effect positive change in urban settings characterized by diversity. It describes an interpretive case study of a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse eighth grade science classroom in an urban magnet school in order to explore why some of the students did not achieve at high levels and identify with school science although they were both interested in and knowledgeable about science. The results of this study indicated that structural issues such as the school's selection process, the discourses perpetuated by teachers, administrators, and peers regarding “who belongs” at the school, and negative stereotype threat posed obstacles for students by highlighting rather than mitigating the inequalities in students' educational backgrounds. We explore how a methodology based on the use of cogenerative dialogues provided some guidance to teachers wishing to alter structures in their classrooms to be more conducive to all of their students developing identities associated with school science. Based on the data analysis, we also argue that a perspective on classrooms as communities of practice in which learning is socially situated rather than as forums for competitive displays, and a view of students as valued contributors rather than as recipients of knowledge, could address some of the obstacles. Recommendations include a reduced emphasis on standardized tasks and hierarchies, soliciting unique student contributions, and encouraging learning through peripheral participation, thereby enabling students to earn social capital in the classroom. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 1209–1228, 2010     

Exploring student hand-raising across two school subjects using mixed methods: An investigation of an everyday classroom behavior from a motivational perspective

Student hand-raising is an everyday behavior in classroom interactions with teachers. This research presents two studies that examine the variance in hand-raising and its relation to student motivation in two school subjects, Mathematics and Language Arts. Student hand-raising is introduced as an indicator of behavioral engagement. Study 1 investigated N = 397 high school students in 20 classrooms during a videotaped lesson in each subject. Multilevel regression analysis suggests that student motivation accounts for significant variance in hand-raising. The results show subject-specific differences: Student self-concept predicts hand-raising in Mathematics, while students' situational interest predicts their hand-raising in Language Arts. Students’ externally regulated motivation is predictive across both subjects. In Study 2, N = 14 high school students were interviewed about their hand-raising behavior. The results validate and extend the findings from Study 1. Finally, this research emphasizes the importance of fostering student hand-raising and discusses the implications for future research.     

教师的“言”和“行”如何支持自主探究性学习

国外关于教师自主支持行为的理论假设认为,自主支持型教师比控制型教师更容易促进学生学习动机的内化。一系列实证研究则表明：在自主支持教师的班级里,学生更愿意呆在学校,倾向于表现出更好的学业能力;具有创造性,偏爱积极挑战;能产生更多的积极情绪,同时也具有更高的自主学习动机。本研究则运用问卷法、座谈法及课堂观察法三种方法,进一步验证了教师的“支持性”行为而非“控制性”行为能够更好地促进自主探究性的学习。同时在跨文化背景的现场观察中得出了我国教师的10种自主支持行为和6种抑制行为。     

Teachers’ belief that math requires innate ability predicts lower intrinsic motivation among low-achieving students

Many students find math difficult, but those who are intrinsically motivated learn and do well even when they face obstacles. Here, we examine an environmental factor that might affect students' intrinsic motivation in math: namely, teachers' beliefs about success in math. Do teachers perceive elementary school math as a domain that requires an innate ability, and does this belief relate to students' intrinsic motivation in math? Our study explored these questions in a sample of 830 German fourth graders and their 56 teachers. Teachers reported stronger beliefs in the role of innate ability for math than for German language arts. In addition, the more teachers believed that math requires innate ability, the lower was the intrinsic motivation of their low-achieving students. These results suggest that teachers’ beliefs that math success depends on innate ability may be an important obstacle to creating a classroom atmosphere that fosters engagement and learning for all students.     

Talking about science: An interpretation of the effects of teacher talk in a high school science classroom

This paper builds on research in science education, secondary education, and sociolinguistics by arguing that high school classrooms can be considered speech communities in which language may be selectively used and imposed on students as a means of fostering academic speech community identification. To demonstrate the ways in which a high school teacher's language use may encourage subject area identification, the results of an interactionist analysis of data from a 2-year ethnographic study of one high school chemistry classroom are presented. Findings indicate that this teacher's uses of language fell into three related categories. These uses of language served to foster identification with the academic speech community of science. As a result of the teacher's talk about science according to these three patterns, students developed or reinforced particular views of science. In addition, talking about science in ways that fostered identity with the discipline promoted the teacher as expert and built classroom solidarity or community. These results are discussed in light of sociolinguistic research on classroom competence and of the assertions of science educators regarding social and ideologic implications of language use in science instruction.     

The Test's the Thing: viewpoints of students with special educational needs

This paper presents views on testing by a cross‐cultural sample of primary and secondary students with special educational needs. While some of the responses indicated that tests were useful for feedback and motivation, half of the sample disliked having tests and found them boring. These negative views were intensified by the marks that the students received and the physical and emotional effects during the testing. As the students viewed tests and assessment as necessary components of school life, the paper concludes that children with special educational needs are entitled to help to overcome their anxieties and that positive classroom practice can help to effect this.     

Students’ Motivation in the Mathematics Classroom. Revealing Causes and Consequences

Students’ affective domain has been popular in the mathematics education community in an ongoing attempt to understand students’ learning behavior. Specifically, enhancing students’ motivation in the mathematics classroom is an important issue for teachers and researchers, due to its relation to students’ behavior and achievement. This paper utilized achievement goal theory—an important theoretical prospect on students’ motivation in school settings—to investigate the existence of a model presenting the relation between motivation and other affective constructs and students’ performance in mathematics. In this regard, two types of tests were administered to 321 sixth grade students measuring their motivation and other affective constructs and their performance in mathematics. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the associations among the affective constructs, motivation, and the extent to which these constructs influence students’ performance and interest in mathematics. The data revealed that students’ performance and their interest in mathematics were influenced by fear of failure, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement goals. We discuss these findings in terms of teaching implications in the mathematics classroom.

     

On Motivation,Ability, and the Perceived Situation in Science Test Performance: A Person-Centered Approach With High School Students

This research examined between-group differences in test-related perceptions, engagement, and performance; and within-group predictors of science performance among groups of high school students characterized by different patterns of science motivation. Patterns of motivation were derived from Dweck's (1986) typology and were used to classify students as mastery oriented, ego oriented, helpless, or "unclassified by such a typology." Groups were then compared on their efficacy for performing successfully on science multiple-choice tests, constructed response tests, and performance assessments; their beliefs about the validity of each test format; and their actual performance on multiple-choice and constructed response items. Group differences in gender composition, test perceptions and engagement, and performance were found. Results are discussed in terms of Snow's (1994) theory of aptitude complexes and their relation to individual differences in performance.     

上海市高中阶段学校艺术教育现状的调查研究

中小学艺术教育改革是中国基础教育改革的重要方面,本调查研究选取了闵行三中和南洋中学,对学生和教师进行访谈和问卷调查。研究表明,影视艺术和音乐最受学生欢迎;上海高中生普遍在幼年受过艺术培训,但坚持到现在的不多;艺术课能缓解学生沉重的高考压力。通过实验教学,对高中艺术教育的教学目的、教学方法、教学内容以及师生互动的方式进行了反思和讨论,并提出了对高中艺术教材的设想和对艺术教师素养的思考。     

Students’ Motivation in the Mathematics Classroom. Revealing Causes and Consequences

Students’ affective domain has been popular in the mathematics education community in an ongoing attempt to understand students’ learning behavior. Specifically, enhancing students’ motivation in the mathematics classroom is an important issue for teachers and researchers, due to its relation to students’ behavior and achievement. This paper utilized achievement goal theory—an important theoretical prospect on students’ motivation in school settings—to investigate the existence of a model presenting the relation between motivation and other affective constructs and students’ performance in mathematics. In this regard, two types of tests were administered to 321 sixth grade students measuring their motivation and other affective constructs and their performance in mathematics. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the associations among the affective constructs, motivation, and the extent to which these constructs influence students’ performance and interest in mathematics. The data revealed that students’ performance and their interest in mathematics were influenced by fear of failure, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement goals. We discuss these findings in terms of teaching implications in the mathematics classroom.     

What they think, what they know, what they do: Rural secondary teachers’ motivational beliefs and strategies

This research examined how rural high school teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of themselves, their students and the challenge of motivation influence their strategic classroom and interpersonal motivating practice. Participants were 13 teachers in three rural, public high schools in two US states. Teachers’ beliefs about motivation generally, and their students’ motivation specifically, reflect a position favouring need and willingness to intervene for unmotivated students. However, their self-perceptions reflect a relatively weak efficacy to intervene successfully. Generally, teachers’ prevalent choice of strategies aligned with their perceptions of reasons that students were undermotivated. In contrast, some teachers’ narratives of actual efforts to motivate a specific student were inconsistent with their self-reported philosophies and style of motivation, and with their general statements of how they would motivate students who needed it. These findings suggest implications for design of teacher education and inservice teacher professional development.     

How student teaching in an urban setting affects teacher candidates' career motivations

This is a qualitative study to determine changes in the motivation of senior student teachers to teach (at the elementary, early childhood, and secondary levels) in an urban setting during the student teaching internship in an urban public school. Emerging themes include roles of classroom teachers, discouragement from tenured teachers, school bureaucracy, views of students, relationships with cooperating teachers, candidates' views about subject matter, and their views about themselves. The findings indicate that motivation to teach changed during student teaching. This cohorts' experiences strengthened their confidence and commitment to teach in culturally diverse urban public schools rather than discouraging them. This research supports a contextual approach to understanding motivation and challenges educators to reflect on several issues of preservice training as well as collaboration with teacher practitioners. With a knowledge of what attracts teachers to the occupation and an understanding of how that attraction is influenced by field experiences in urban schools, programs which prepare teachers may be better able to educate teachers who want to teach in urban schools and can perform successfully in that setting.     

Developmental changes in cognitive persistence and academic achievement between grade 4 and grade 8

This study describes changes in cognitive persistence, a key measure of mastery motivation, between the ages of 10 (grade 4) and 14 (grade 8). Prior research in the field of mastery motivation has focused mainly on early childhood. No longitudinal research findings have been published about age changes in mastery motivation during the school years. The sample of this longitudinal study consisted of 372 students in Hungary and was representative of the Hungarian school population regarding parents’ level of education. Participants were in 25 school classes, each from a different town. The instrument was the cognitive persistence scale of the Hungarian version of the Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ). Grade point average (GPA), parents’ level of education, the size of the class and of the town were analyzed as background variables. Cognitive persistence based on students’ self-reports decreased substantially in 61 % of the students, did not change in 33 %, and increased in only 6 % over the four school years. Changes in cognitive persistence correlated with changes in GPA. Significant differences were found among school classes in both the average level of cognitive persistence and in how much it changed. However, neither cognitive persistence nor changes in cognitive persistence correlated with parents’ level of education or town size. Aspects of the school and classroom climate seem to substantially impact changes in students’ cognitive persistence. In addition, this study considered educational applications and for further research.     

Environnements Informatisés et Mathématiques: quels usages pour quels apprentissages?

Mathematics, seen as a model of pure science, often conveys the image of a science constructing itself in quite poor technological environments; it nevertheless develops by elaborating (and by exploiting) powerful material and symbolic tools. Actually mathematics teaching is closer to this image of mathematics than to mathematical practice: its goal seems to transmit a form of culture rather than efficient computation tools and theoretical means of their control (Kahane, 2002). This situation is viable if the tools can be held at distance, outside the classroom; it is no longer viable when computation tools (essentially calculators) are imported by students themselves inside the classroom and integrated into their mathematical practice. Thus established conflict between the social legitimacy of these tools and their school illegitimacy (Chevallard, 1992) deeply destabilises mathematics teaching itself. We present here a general framework to think about the integration of the tools in the teaching and learning of mathematics. More precisely, we propose:

1. A theoretical approach, which allows us to understand the influence of tools on human activity and in particular on professional and school education processes;
2. An analysis of computerized learning environments, which shows the importance of students' control of their own activity;
3. Some elements that help to think about the temporal and spatial organization of study in such environments and to guide students' activity;
4. A reflection about the conception of pedagogical resources, which is all the more necessary if one wants to facilitate an evolution of teachers' practices.

     

Documenting support needs and adjustment gaps for students with disabilities: teacher practices in Australian classrooms and on national tests

Accommodations or adjustments for students with disabilities (SWDs) who need them are required in Australian education law and policy for classroom instruction and assessment, and external educational accountability tests. Drawing upon the structure of the Assessment Accommodations Checklist and more than a decade of accessibility research, the Checklist of Learning and Assessment Adjustments for Students (CLAAS) was developed to help teachers select and document adjustments that support SWDs and students with additional needs in classroom instruction and assessment, and external tests. The CLAAS was trialled with 21 primary school teachers documenting adjustments for 89 students with diverse needs. Teachers indicated that the CLAAS provided a comprehensive list of adjustments, was useful for recording adjustments across classroom instruction and assessment, and external tests, and provided guidance about potential adjustments for SWDs or with additional learning needs. The documented adjustments also indicated some considerable gaps between supports provided in classrooms compared with the Australian educational accountability tests. Findings also provided initial evidence for the reliability and validity of use of the CLAAS for its intended purposes. The CLAAS is a promising tool for helping both researchers and teachers systematically document and provide equitable and inclusive adjustments for SWDs and additional learning needs given their needs for classroom learning, assessment and external testing and examination requirements.     

Illuminating the ‘boy problem’ from children's and teachers' perspectives: a pilot study

The apparent educational underperformance of boys has received phenomenal attention worldwide for many years. In the UK, it has led to various government reports and policies aimed at raising boys' achievement. This small-scale qualitative-interpretive pilot study, undertaken in one urban primary school in North Wales, reports the findings from exploring boys', aged six to seven years, perceptions of education. It also presents teachers' perceptions of how boys' learn and what they regard to be visible gender differences in the classroom. The research suggests that although many boys within this age group seemed generally positive about school and learning, certain issues were emerging for some boys that, if not addressed, could result in disengagement and/or underperformance. Factors include: issues related to boys' reading and literacy; boys' preference for screen-based, digital devices; gender binaries in relation to learning styles and behaviours; gender-specific syndromes; and teacher concerns about the impact of a ‘feminised’ education sector. The objective of this paper is to examine, after decades of research studies and government reports, what do we really know about the perceptions of young male learners and their experiences within the context of the primary classroom?     

Primary school students' metacognitive beliefs about religious education

So far scholars have researched beliefs about knowledge, knowing, and learning mainly in the areas of science and mathematics and among secondary school students. In this article, we explore primary school students' metacognitive beliefs about religious education. The article reports on a study involving 656 fifth- and sixth-grade students. We investigated their metacognitive beliefs, how these beliefs interrelate, and which students agree with which beliefs. In the minds of young students 7 categories are discernible: realistic learning, the transformative power of religion, social learning, intrinsic task value motivation, learning satisfaction motivation, the teacher's empathic orientation to learning, and the teacher's respect for students' contributions. These categories and their interrelationships open up new perspectives for the construction of a metacognitive beliefs system and for an interconnected network of beliefs across domains. We also outline implications for religious education in schools.