By
EDCI 4322.01 Human Development
Spring 2008
School of Education
University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College
This Paper was presented at the 2nd Conference of Elementary Secondary Teaching & Learning (CESTL) in April, 2008, Brownsville, Texas. If you have any questions or comments regarding this paper, please contact the authort directly at lori.garza@utb.edu
There are many different reasons for why the students are not motivated to learn, especially not motivated to learn mathematics in their classrooms. Mathematics is a subject which is not only difficult to teach but to learn. Many students hold a negative attitude towards mathematics. “These feelings originate from and are influenced by one’s memories of past failures and successes, by one’s peers, teachers, and parents, by the methods of teaching to which one has been instructed, by the type of mathematics to which one has been exposed, and by the learning environments in which one has encountered mathematics” (Martinez & Martinez, 1996, p. 2 ).
First of all, teacher passion plays an important role in students’ motivation to learn math. If the students are introduced to mathematics with positive attitudes, many of them will develop positive feelings about math. “Motivation and learning context play important roles in the learning of mathematics” (NCTM, 2000; Ma & Kishor, 1997). Teachers have a lot of influence on the students. If the teachers themselves do not show passion and enthusiasm teaching the materials, then the students will not be motivated.
The type of teaching methods and strategies a teacher use in the classroom is also critical in motivating the students to learn. Students are motivated only when the teacher is able to use different kinds of strategies or activities to keep the students “on their feet.” There are a variety of strategies and activities a math teacher can use to motivate their students to learn. Research shows that using universal design for learning principles by designing quick pace and varied instruction and engagement, adhering to challenge standards, utilizing self-verbalization methods, and making use of physical and visual representations of numbers concept and problem-solving can help students learn math in a more effective way (Fuch & Fuchs, 2001). “There is suggestive evidence that games and play have more positive effect on motivation and retention of knowledge than conventional instruction” (Jonnavitula & Kinshuk, 2005).
Definition of Motivation
There are two types of motivation: extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when a person’s motivation comes from the outside. Students who get motivated by other things or other people rather than the learning task itself are extrinsically motivated. For example, when a student needs the teacher to push them become motivated, then it is extrinsic motivation. Extrinsically motivated students need external things to push them to learn. For example, these people need rewards, feedback, and pressure from others to become motivated.
The second type of motivation is intrinsic. Intrinsic is when a person had inner self motivation. This type of motivation is associated with the self directed learning. These students may need some guides from the teacher to help the student develop an action plan. The teacher may set the goals for learning, show why the content is important, and provide activities for the students.
Theories on Motivation
Motivation has been explored by many psychological scholars and at least four main theories have been developed to explain motivation. The first theory was by B.F skinner and it is called behaviorism theory. This theory is based of the S-R-S (Stimuli-response-consequences) which states that human behaviors are controlled and determined by many consequence following the behaviors. Some of the consequences, according to behaviorism, are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, time-out, extinction, and response cost.
The second theory was developed by Bandura; and his theory is called social cognitive learning theory. Social cognitive learning theory believes that we learn through observation and modeling, and our motivation is determined by our perception and interpretation of the things around us as well as our perception of ourselves. Specifically, social cognitive theory emphasize two determining factors in motivation: the expectations and the self efficacy. Expectancy refers to the value you put on the thing you observed. It is when you ask yourself before attempting to do the same thing you are observing: “Do I want to do it?” Self-efficacy refers to the value you put in yourself and how confident you are in completing the learning task. It is more of asking yourself the question “Can I do it?” when watching someone displaying some behavior.
The third motivation theory is trait perspectives. This theory explains motivation through three aspects: affiliation, approval, and achievement. The first is affiliation and it is the need that we all want to feel connected or associated with someone or some group to something. The second one is approval, which refers to our need for recognition from others. The last one is achievement, which is our need to succeed in something.
The fourth and last motivation theory is cognitive learning theory. According to cognitive learning theory, we are all self-motivated to learn because we have this natural desire to learn such as curiosity, interest, control, and mastery. For example, children at younger age are in general very motivated to learn almost anything they do not know.
Statement of the Problem
Although motivation is a key factor in students’ learning, there are many problems with students’ motivation today. Many middle and high school students do not have much motivation. Mathematics is considered as hard by students at this level. Students are brought up or introduced to mathematics in an ineffective way and thus developed a negative attitudes towards math. Another problem with students learning math is that most students perceived math as too difficult for them, and they tend to easily give up on the problems.
Methodology
Research Question
The research addressed the following research question:
1. What can teachers do to motivate elementary students to learn mathematics?
Research Site
This research took place at Dr. Garza Elementary school in San Benito, Texas. This elementary school is located on a low social economic area in San Benito. This school is one of the newest elementary schools. The classroom we used was designed to work with groups of students. It was not a regular classroom and it had different types of tables for students to sit on.
Participants
The people who participated in this research were a class of 16 students, a co-worker, and myself (the researcher). There were eight Kinder and eight 1st graders. Ten of the students were male and six were female. Ms. Cavazos was my co-worker. She was 20 years old and was working towards her bachelor’s degree in arts. I, as the researcher and also the participant, was 21 years old and working towards my bachelor’s degree in 4-8th mathematics education.
Data Collection
I observed my own classroom in the After School Program located at the Dr. Raul Garza Elementary. I conducted the self-observations every Tuesday during the spring 2008 semester (about 2 ½ hours each week). Through our research, my co-worker and I would design fun math activities together and try them in our classroom practice. Besides the self-observation, I also interviewed Ms. Cavazos about what she thought motivated these students to learn mathematics and about our experiences of working together. This interview lasted for about an hour and it was very informative for my research.
Findings
When I started my research with this math course, I had trouble with the students’ motivation. The main reason was that because it was an After School Program, the students were really tired by the time they came out our class. During our teaching, we received little or no reactions from the students. They kept on refusing to do their homework.
However, as the semester went on, my partner and I tried different and new activities everyday, and we started to see the motivation change in students. We noticed that many students’ reactions were a lot different than it was in the beginning all the students. They became more and more engaged in our class. We received a lot of positive feedback from the students. The students are more looking forward to the After School Program. I even had some students cried at the end of the class because they did not want to leave.
Some teachers at the school are very surprised by the change and they came to us asking what we did and they wanted to learn from us. My students have achieved so much this semester and want to achieve more. My students now come in motivated already and can tell me an addition or subtraction problem in about 10 seconds. While in the beginning of the semester it took the students about 2-3 minutes to try to solve one math problem addition or subtraction.
So how to motivate elementary students to learn math? What strategies did we use to change their negative attitudes towards math? Through self-observation and self-reflection both as a teacher and a student, and also my interviews with my partner, I found several important factors which can be used to motivate students to learn.
First, I found that teacher enthusiasm plays an important role in students’ motivation. Take my own experience with this class for example. When we were motivated ourselves as soon as we walked into the classroom, I noticed that the students immediately started to feel excited and motivated.
The second discovery on how to motivate students to learn was using warm-up activities at the beginning of the class. Traditionally, the After School Program had been always used for the students to do their homework as soon as they walked into our classrooms. Many parents also expected our program to help their children complete and correct all their homework by the time they came picking them up. As mentioned earlier, since it was an After School Program, the children were very exhausted from the whole day’s school work. They did not want to do any school work and they just wanted to play.
Considering this situation, my partner and I decided to do some warm-up activities at the beginning of our class. We started them off with a warm-up activity that helped wake them up and become excited. Some of the warm-ups activities we used were Red Light, Green Light. This warm-up was similar to Freeze but, we would call the name of an animal or object which the students were expected to act like. For example, we would call mouse and they would tippy toe and crawl on the floor until we called RED LIGHT, then they would stop. We receive a lot of reactions from the students, which showed that they were motivated. The students had fun and kept on telling that they wanted to do more.
Thirdly, students become motivated when they are doing hands-on activities. In general, I observed that students did not like doing worksheet after. An example of a hands-on activity that we did was to play baseball outside with addition and subtraction problems. We called this activity math baseball. The materials needed for this game were just a plastic baseball bat, a plastic baseball, and four plates. The object of this game was the pitcher. First, one of the instructors started the activity by saying an addition/subtraction problem. If the answers given by a student were correct, then the student would be struck out and another student would take over the bat. The students had so much fun with this activity that they did not even realize that they were learning math. When parents went to go pick them up, they did not want to leave.
Another activity we used was a beach ball game. The rules of this game was to call the name of the person you were going to throw the ball to, this way we wouldn’t have anyone get hit in the face. The beach ball had numbers (from 1-8) written on it. The students would either add or subtract the numbers depending on what they were supposed to be learning that day. Then the students would go up to the board and write down the numbers in their hands added/subtracted by the numbers the beach ball landed. The students had so much fun playing the beach ball game and they became very intense because they were playing against each other.
Using hands-on activities also helped us with students’ discipline problems, because the students were all engaged in learning and had no energy to misbehave. Also the students were informed by us that if they do not behave, then they would not be allowed to participate in hands-on learning activities.
The last motivation strategy we used in our study was positive reinforcement such as the rewards. The reward system helped the students become motivated and want to learn. For example, in our teaching, we started the semester with a sticker chart. If the students received 10 stickers, they would get a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. This strategy greatly motivated my students to learn because I observed that they worked ever harder after they know their learning would be rewarded.
Conclusion
This study discovered several important factors or strategies which can help students to learn math. These strategies include teacher passion, using warm-ups activities at the beginning of the class, using hands- on activities, and using rewards systems. The reason why I believe these strategies work is because as I mentioned earlier, my students would come into the program very unmotivated and exhausted at the beginning of this semester. Once I started using different warm-ups and hands-on activities with manipulatives, the students were having so much fun that they didn’t realize that they were learning. However, although there are many different ways to motivate students to learn, it does take a lot of time and planning. Through doing this research, I learned that learning math can actually be fun for the students when they are motivated to learn.
Application
This research showed that students can be motivated by different things. First, students have behavioral needs which also can be referred to as external needs. These needs can be favorable consequences or rewards. Students also have social needs such as interacting with others. Students can be motivated by interacting with one another, and this is why using hands-on activities can be so effective for them. Next, students have physical needs such as (food, water, comfort). Therefore, it is important for the teachers to make sure that the students are not suffering from hunger, thirst, discomfort, or fatigue. For example, our students came to our class feeling exhausted, which prevented the students from concentrating on learning. As a solution, we used the warm-up activity to wake them up and worked out very well.
References
Motivation to Learn: An Overview. April 9, 2008, from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/motivate.html
Huitt, W. (2001). Motivation-Basic Concepts and Theories. April 9, 2008, from http://www.themanager.org/resources/Motivation.htm
Kroeger, Stephen D. (2006). Using Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies to Increase Response to Intervention in Inclusive Middle Math Settings. Teaching Exceptional Children, 6-13. April 9, 2008. http://pathfinder.utb.edu///;2388/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml:hwwilsonid=...
Sedig, Kamran. (2008). From play to Thoughtful Learning: A Design Strategy to Engage Children With Mathematical Representations. The Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 65-101. April 9, 2008, http://pathfinder.utb.edu:2388/hww/results%20_single_fulltext.jhtml:hwwilsonid=...
Stack, K. (2007). Motivation: Extrinsic and intrinsic. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/motivation/start.html
To read articles of this week:
Class Size and Learning
A Story on the CESTL
Feedback on 2nd CESTL
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