Emerald - Motivation - Article Example

Critical analysis paper Introduction Researchers and educationist have paid considerable attention to the relevant factors that contribute to enhancing the performance of the student. They found that both psychological and environmental characteristics affected the students’ learning. Motivation can be defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Motivation is the drive that causes us to act. Motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is very useful in teaching learning process. Normally, the students link the quality of teaching to their motivation and therefore there is a high requirement among the teachers and the educational administrators to exhibit high interest and personality traits since they impact on the students’ perceptions. According to a critical case study which was conducted by Emerald, motivation constitutes a central element when going through the process of human learning. Motivational theories and research mainly focus on students’ motivational orientation for learning, but the interaction between the learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not fully examined. Also, the theories pay little focus on the values of employees in a specific organization. Theories of motivation are based on the needs, and they are used to determine the needs of specific organizations. Application of the motivational theories in the organizations today is difficult because of the changing circumstances faced by organizations. Executive Summary In the articles produced by Emerald, the authors discussed how to measure motivation in the learning institution and the importance of motivation in the learning institutions. The article criticized how motivation theory because they are based on the needs of the learners. The criticism is on the basis that they are static and are not applicable in the present because we are living in a dynamic world. The article also emphasized that the theories do not include employees, and this shows that there is no research on how the motivation of workers contribute to their respective behaviors in the workplace. The concerned parties and stakeholders are promoting innovative, and outstanding teaching have advanced teaching quality and therefore this has become a major ingredient across all business schools and other learning institutions. For many years, teaching quality has always been examined through theory and there is less application. Emerald authors examined the perceptions that undergraduate students have towards teaching quality and students’ orientation. The article continues to emphasize that, research on student’s motivation is very essential to learning and teaching. This research is done by examining what the learners want and what motivates them. The other way in which it can be teaching learning quality can be researched is through measuring of teaching. Motivation There are other theories of motivation which Emerald author did not mention in the article. The instinct theory of motivation also affects the learning process and the output of the employees. This theory suggests that behaviors are motivated by instincts. Some of the instincts that guide human behavior include fear, cleanliness and love, and they are all important for the survival of human beings. From the article, the author only focused on fear as an extrinsic factor which motivates the learners. However, some students are motivated by what they love most. For example, if a student loves doing things with their hands then they will perform on those subjects which have more practical work. In the case of an organization, as the Emerald author puts it, it is important to build reasoning around motivation. This is because application of the motivational theories into the changing economic times is becoming a challenge ad more so because of the failure to include the employees in the motivational process. Humans are always predicting some tangible reward and payoff for their behaviors, intrinsically driven or not. If the learner or an employee is not getting any extrinsic motivation, then intrinsic motivation drivers may not work. Analysis of the article Using the data from the article where university students carried out a survey on motivational orientations, it is clear that motivation among the students negatively affects the student satisfaction. This study only limits the questions to the perceptions relevant for the study. Some of the factors which are included in the study include enthusiasm which measures the student’s perception of the instructor’s enthusiasm, humor and the ability to hold their attention. Organization is the other factor, and this concerns the teacher’s organization of the course including materials and class presentation. Interaction reflects the encouragement that the teacher shows while in class. The information in this article mainly affects the perception of the learners and affects the quality of the learning process. Most of the human behavior is directed by goals and needs. There are wide ranges of goals ranging from personal to professional, making one happy in school for doing well in class and from short-term to long-term. Most of the researchers including the author of the Emerald article look at motivational theories, and they do not include the orientation theory. Goal orientation theory examines why students engage in their academic work, unlike motivational theories which only focuses on the students’ beliefs about their success and failures. Under the goals orientation theory, a distinction is made between two orientations. These are mastery and performance. Mastery refers to the desire to acquire new knowledge or to master new skills while performance refers to the ability to demonstrate high ability and to make a good impression. Mastery-oriented goals are terms which provide focus on learning. In this case, the learner acquires new knowledge according to self-standards or self-improvement. The student tries to accomplish something new by trying to gain understanding or insight. Performance orientated goals refers to the ability to demonstrate competence. For example, a student may set a target to surpass a standard normative performance using comparative standards. In summary, mastery goals work best compared to performance goals. Goal orientation theory ensures that multiple goals are established to so as to avoid formulation of goals that contrast with each other (Fraser, Adam, 2015). There are different theories of motivation. Some focus on the quality of motivation while others focus on the quantity. Quantity of motivation could be high or low, and it depends on with the source of motivation either internal or external. Self-determination theory of motivation considers the quality of motivation to be more important than the quantity and describes a continuum of quality of education. The continuum ranges from intrinsic motivation to motivation at the other end of the continuum, with four types of extrinsic motivation. These are integrated regulation, identified regulation, introjected regulation and external regulation. Extrinsic motivation is derived out of an expected gain or an admirable outcome. Intrinsic motivation and regulation can be summed up to produce autonomous motivation. In most cases, motivation has been tested and reported that it affects the academic performance of primary schools, high schools, and even colleges but no study has been carried out to investigate the effects of motivation on the production of the employees working for organizations. In most organizations, Maslow theory of motivation is, and other theories of motivation explain the same factors and thus they seem to be static, and they cannot explain what motivates employees today. However, the theories cannot be rejected because what matters is the application of the theories but not the concept. Quality teaching is becoming an increasingly significant factor for the past few years because of the high demands in the job market. This is because it will enable the learners to produce quality work when they are employed as workers of any organization. In the past, mass education was emphasized but nowadays the shift is towards quality teaching which is mainly student-focused. There is little research on defining what quality teaching is. Some researchers define quality teaching on factors which affect the students or the teachers. However, others argue that students and teachers are only clients, producers or even products of quality teaching. This has created a controversy among the instructors, and this requires clarification. In this paper, a team of four members discussed some topics which are related to the quality teaching. These members include Mr. Badr, Mr. Jarrah, Mr. Saeed and Mr. Mohammed. During the discussions where the article from Emerald was analyzed, each member contributed to the specific topic which the author though affects the motivation of the learner and the general learning. Mr. Badr opened the discussion, and he chose to discuss the topic of students’ motivation. He said that student motivation is very crucial in the process of quality teaching. Students learn so to acquire skills in writing, reading, speaking and thinking. To achieve competence, students must be motivated so that they engage in literacy activities. Instructions from the instructors and practice provide the feedback and the coaching required for gaining competence. When students achieve improved competence, it promotes continued motivation to engage. This cycle supports improved student’s achievement. The school management and leaderships are therefore mandated to ensure that this cycle of engagement and instruction is provided by all teachers and learners. This is because research shows that motivation is based on some various types of relationships. One of the relationships is between mastery and performance orientation of the student. The motivation which is perceived to class orientation is common among high-achieving students. Classroom orientation provides the climate which affects so many factors which are considered to be motivation variables that contribute to the learning of the students. These motivational variables impact on the development of self-regulation, long-term involvement and interest in learning. Therefore, to reproduce quality outcomes, if the students’ nature of interacting with the classroom orientation is changed, then their achievement goals are redirected. The autonomous motivation for teaching also has a positive impact for both teachers and learners. It improves student’s perception on the teacher as supportive. There is also a relationship between the intrinsic motivation and student’s prior knowledge. This relationship is affected by some factors such as characteristics of the learning environment, the novelty of information being taught and intellectual freedom of the students to engage and pursue their answers. Studies also established that there is little relationship between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation such as grades. The students learn and retains for their personal interests and not for the sake of attaining high marks. It was established that fear of negative reinforcement that is a major threat to learning for its sake. This means that the students engage in learning not to achieve something positive but to avoid harsh and negative consequences of failure. Intrinsic motivation occurs when the students are seeking intellectual from their studies, while extrinsic motivation occurs when the students are afraid of their grades or marks or even their future careers. The extrinsic motivation act as ego boosts because the students are interested in doing something so that they can be praised and recognized. Mr. Badr highly supported what was in the article. Mr. Jarrah emphasized that the teaching quality measures is a way of promoting quality teaching. When teaching effectiveness is measured, then it is possible to test the quality of teaching. Mr. Jarrah said that there was a link between teaching quality and students’ motivation orientation. He supported his argument using Self-Determination theory which says that behavior can be effectuated by intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and absence of motivation (amotivation). The perception of the students towards teaching quality can be explained through motivation orientation factors and the type of motivation exhibited towards the learning experience. Therefore, students with intrinsic motivation have an ability to engage fully in the learning process and therefore positive outcomes are expected. Those who do not have any motivation have a negative perception towards quality teaching and these kinds of students exhibit inability or unwillingness to be motivated. Students who are highly non-motivated have the tendency of lowering the quality of teaching in their institution compared to motivated students. The other way of promoting quality teaching is through breaking the cycle of failure. This is according to Mr. Saeed, who pointed out that the author of the article forgot to include. Breaking this cycle require classroom intervention. The cycle of failure exists among the students who struggle to read and write. When the cycle is broken, then these students will be able to engage and participate actively in their literacy development. The classroom prompts and supports reluctant readers and writers to want to engage with literacy tasks which promote open instructions. Classroom intervention provides motivation to read, multiple opportunities and authentic reasons to study more. In these classrooms the learners feel that the teacher really care about them and their learning. The teachers and leaders can reverse the downward spiral of failure that many students experience by creating literacy-rich environments throughout the school. However, the students cannot be expected to develop skills when the context of engagement and support for instruction are not there. To improve the learning level, variety of approaches need to be checked. One of them is use of conceptual theme to guide inquiry, encouragement of self-direction (intrinsic motivation), social collaboration and support for the use of cognitive strategies. In class, the teachers are encouraged to make connections with students’ lives. In classroom, the teachers who promote motivation make connections between the theory in the text and the life experiences of the students. Motivation to learn is enhanced by their new knowledge and their experience and also by discussion that precede the Mohammed laid an emphasis on the dynamic triangle of motivation which explains the central elements which helps in understanding motivation in terms of values and needs. He argued that these factors mainly act as the potential indicators of motivational needs. Every person has these needs but in different proportions because every person attaches varying importance to the needs. The triangle is made up of social, mental and physical dimensions. Due to the difference in the way each individual value the needs, a difference is also seen in institutions such as schools and even organizations. In an organization, the difference that can be noted is mainly through the culture of different individuals. Identity is not static but it continuously changes and develops can be used to explain the values and attitudes of an individual. The identity of a person is affected by both internal and external factors and these factors can be examined at three levels; individual level, organization level and at culture level. Personality theories explain why acts, attitudes and goals are similar during a long period of time and this answer why we behave differently from each other. The values and attitudes are generally affected by social and economic past of each individual and their environment. The sum of values forms the collective behavior which is seen in organizations. Therefore, the attitude and values of a person cannot be seen as something within a person but identity of a person is shaped by the social context. Due to the individual difference that exists in an organization, it is important to establish the structure of the organization into smaller parts such as teams, units or departments to create subcultures that will enable the organization to be productive. Many organizations are faced with constrains on how to operate successfully with the limiting motivational values. Laws, rules and procedures must be part of the dynamic so as to eliminate defective identity. From the discussion from the team members, there is a need to examine how motivations influence quality teaching in schools and also among the employees in a company. This is because there is a link between the two because both need to be motivated to produce their best. Factors which affect the motivation of an employee are the relationship with other people within the organization and the working environment. On the other hand, students are affected by school environment and relationship with teachers and other people who are involved in learning. The article examined deeply on the importance of motivation and indeed it really matters. More synthesis is required on theory and data. Researchers and leaders are encouraged to use what is available cleverly. School administrators and the management should not ignore personal opinions and motivation because they are key contributors to quality teaching. Conclusion Quality teaching is becoming an increasingly significant factor for the past few years because of the high demands in the job market. Motivation is believed to be the most contributing factor towards the performance of the student. Motivation is the drive that causes us to act. Motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is very useful in teaching learning process. Motivational theories and research mainly focus on students’ motivational orientation for learning, but the interaction between the learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not fully examined. Also, the theories pay little focus on the values of employees in a specific organization. Humans are always predicting some tangible reward and payoff for their behaviors, intrinsically driven or not. If the learner or an employee is not getting any extrinsic motivation, then intrinsic motivation drivers may not work. When students achieve improved competence, it promotes continued motivation to engage. This cycle supports improved student’s achievement. The school management and leaderships are therefore mandated to ensure that this cycle of engagement and instruction is provided by all teachers and learners. The cycle of failure exists among the students who struggle to read and write. When the cycle is broken, then these students will be able to engage and participate actively in their literacy development. The classroom prompts and supports reluctant readers and writers to want to engage with literacy tasks which promote open instructions. Identity is not static but it continuously changes, and develops can be used to explain the values and attitudes of an individual. The identity of a person is affected by both internal and external factors, and these factors can be examined at three levels; individual level, organization level and at culture level. References Yamazumi, Katsuhiro. "Quality assurance in teacher education: Implications for promoting student learning." Reforming learning and teaching in Asia-Pacific universities. Springer Singapore, 2016. 381-401. Anderman, Eric. "Goal Orientation Theory." Fraser, Adam. "Goal orientation theory." (2015): 18. Read More