Achievement Processes

Achievement Processes

1. Extrinsic and Intrinsic motivation

   • Extrinsic motivation
     • Involves doing something to obtain something else (a means to an end).
       • It is often influenced by external incentives such as rewards and punishments.
   • Intrinsic motivation
     • Involves the internal motivation to do something for its own sake (an end in itself).
       • Self-Determination and Personal Choice
         • Students want to believe that they are doing something because of their own will, not because of external success or rewards.
       • Optimal Experiences and Flow
         • Involve feelings of deep enjoyment and happiness, the term flow to describe optimal experiences in life.
       • Interest
         • Individual interest
           • Is thought to be relatively stable.
         • Situational interest
           • Is believed to be generated by specific aspects of a task activity.
       • Cognitive Engagement and Self-Responsability
         • The importance of creating learning environments that encourage students to become cognitively engaged and take responsability for their learning.
           • To get students to become motivated to expend the effort to persist and master ideas rather than doing just enough work to make a passing grade.

2. Attribution theory

   • The theory that individuals are motivated to discover the underlying causes of their own behavior and performance.
     • Bernard Weiner identified three dimensions of casual attributions:
       • Locus: the cause is internal or external to the actor.
       • Stability: the cause remains the same or changes, (stable-unstable).
       • Controllability: the individual can control the cause, (controllable-uncontrollable).

3. Mastery motivation and mindset

   • helpless orientation
     • A response to challenges and difficulties in which the individual feels trapped by the difficulty and attributes the difficulty to a lack of ability.
   • Mastery orientation
     • A task-oriented response to difficult or challenging circumstances that focuses on learning strategies and the process of achievement rather than the outcome.
   • Performance orientation
     • A focus on winning rather than an achievement outcome; sucess is believed to result from winning.
   • Mindset
     • Dweck's concept that refers to the cognitive view individuals develop for themselves; individuals have one of two mindsets: (1) fixed or (2) growth.

4. Self-efficacy

   • The belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes.

5. Long-Term and Short-term Goals

   • Whe the students set goals and plan, they should be reminded to live their lives on day at a time. The students should also work in small increments.