Journal Reflections

Reflection 1

Objective
Something that caught my attention in Chapter 2 of "Student Engagement Techniques"  was the concept of motivation.  Motivation plays an important role in a learning environment as this is how our attention is captured and we can relate the material to our lives and experiences. It is the feeling of interest or enthusiasm that makes somebody want to do something (Barkley, 2012)/

Reflection.
I have always  believed that someone has to be genuinely interested in the material in order to  learn it, but never really gave a second thought to what that motivation really looks like or means. What I mean by this is that motivation has traditionally been something that is told to us. In elementary school and high school, we are mostly motivated by the people around us telling us that we need to know what we are learning because it will help us become successful. But now, as an adult learner I am seeing that motivation is different for every learner. For some it is self efficacy, for some it is attributes and for some it is self worth.

Interpretive
 Regardless of the reasons, rewarding with incentives such as a high grade may not be as effective as other ways of fostering the motivation of the individual (Barkley, 2012). Rather helping learners get to a place of "flow" is motivational and rewarding in itself. For me, in a classroom that is the ultimate motivation, as it is an internal feeling of success, not a grade or physical reward. I have been in practice the differences of someone having an aha moment, or a moment of flow versus receiving a mark. It has a different way of the learner carrying themselves with confidence as they are feeling internally successful.

Decisional
What are some ways that I can create an environment of motivation in my classroom whereby learners can reach a state of flow and sense that internal success?  I think one thing that I could incorporate immediately is the idea of immediate and continuous feedback that Barkley talks about. For example, when in the field, when we have completed an interview, I think setting some time aside immediately after to debrief and provide a 2 way feedback would be helpful, as this allows the learner to reflect on their own experience, receive the feedback, and think about how they would do things different in their own next experience-making it relevant to them. A second strategy would be to make sure that goals are clear and simple. Sometimes in the work that we do, goals can be complex in the way that we write them. For example, the goal of interviewing a child. Interviewing a child has many steps. I think I could break that down more to say something like, the goal of the first part of an interview; building a relationship, I think by implementing these to strategies as a start, relates the goals of their learning back to their own experiences, motivating them to meet their own goals.