Motivation: The Cognitive Perspective

By Melissa Yonelunas
College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
February 25, 2011

This lesson on motivation was extremely helpful to me because it provided me with a good foundation for my research project. Out of the five perspectives that we learned about, the cognitive perspective was my favorite. I think that this is a form of intrinsic motivation, and it very much describes what it is that motivates me. I feel that intrinsic motivation is more effective because, since the individual is doing something for themselves, the challenge becomes a lot more meaningful.

For me, I have always been motivated by challenging myself in school. My learning and performance as a student was done for me, not for anyone else. Sure, I liked the praise from teachers and family members, who doesn’t? But I also felt more confident and a greater sense of accomplishment for myself. This outlook on learn still continues in college. For example, last semester I wrote my honors thesis. While this thesis only had to be 50 pages in length, mine wound up being about 86 pages. This was because I was truly curious and passionate about my topic. The paper became less of a requirement in my head, and more about completing a project that I could be proud of, on a topic that I wished to do justice to. When I completed the thesis, I felt an overwhelming sense of achievement. It was something that I set out to do, worked on for two semesters, and finally completed in a work that I could certainly be proud of. While others sighed in relief at being done and never wanted to think about their projects again, I still possess a deep passion and interest in what I wrote about and am constantly analyzing new material in this way and making connections.

It is for this reason, that I can say, from personal experience, that finding things that students are interested in, can relate to, or are curious about is a key factor of motivation. Once you can find that topic that sparks the students’ interests, learning will instantly become more meaningful and fun. Student will embrace lessons on the topics they take an interest in, and will be motivated to do research outside of class in addition to actively learning in class. I think for teachers, appealing to what it is the students enjoy, and allowing them to make these connections in their own lives, is one of the most effective ways to motivate them to want to learn. Fortunately, there are many ways to do this in the classroom. It requires positive teacher-student relationships, hard work, and a little bit of creativity, but it will be worth it to see eager faces ready to learn when they walk into your classroom. Methods of applying students’ interests into lessons are definitely among the techniques I wish to research in more depth over the course of my research project.