Week Three Theory to Practice

If teachers believe that their students are intrinsically motivated to be successful learners and are working toward a greater understanding, the students will believe that same success is possible, because according to Vygotsky, students bring a rich context with them to their learning. Students bring their cultural, familial and community influences to their cognitive development. That context, in conjunction with classroom instructed scaffolding can serve to provide a rich and dynamic learning process. While teachers need to have a genuine understanding of student context in order to best support that student, context can also allow students the benefit of divergent and varied experiences that enrich the classroom experience for the teacher and all students. Teachers can utilize that variety to build cultural awareness and conscious sensitivity for the needs of other students.

In a substantially similar vein, if teachers genuinely believe in their students and seek to develop authentic relationships that include an understanding and interest in their lives outside of school, this structure of emotional support and encouragement will go a long way in providing students with an atmosphere of safe and secure space. This safe and secure space and connectivity to personal lives provides a scaffold to help students to acquire new understandings and grasp transferable ideas.

Similarly, this emotionally and educationally scaffolded learning environment is a student motivator as security and connected relationships are necessary for student success and are motivational tools in and of themselves. This a motivator that a caring teacher can provide with relative ease, as long as the teacher is mindful of her own emotionality and seeks to manage emotions and continually work at connections with her students.

Finally, I would like to speak to the concept of self-determination. In both the Daniel Pink clip and the Vicki Davis clip, the applicability to self-determination and students motivation and success (measured by enthusiasm, production, and quality of production) is amazing. Both clips point to the immense value that individuals receive from being allowed to make decisions about what one is working on, and when one is doing it. Pink's data shows that individuals with strong extrinsic motivators (job security, money, etc.) are performing their jobs as expected when the tasks are set out for them, but when they are allowed to choose the tasks, the performance went up considerably. To take this self-determination into a classroom would provide students with two important skills, I believe. First, it would allow students confidence in decision making and second, accountability to that decision making. By having ownership of an activity from beginning to end, the student is not told what to do, he makes those decisions for himself. This will allow him more creativity in the product as well.

So, to wrap up, teachers must be aware of the emotionality of their students and themselves in order to foster security which in turn supports motivation. Teachers must make a present and conscious effort to know their students at a personal level and understand their lives outside of school. In order to provide structured scaffolding within school, the the teacher must take pains to fully understand what students emotionally and socially bring to school with them so she can be sure that she is providing an environment that is conducive to motivated learning.