Into educational research about motivation? The following 15 annotations may be of interest to you. I used this literature to do action research related to gender and motivation. The following annotated bibliography is related to motivation only though–not gender. If your interested at all in motivation, it’s an interesting start.
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Motivation Annotations
On February - 13 - 2009
Cash for Grades?
On October - 3 - 2008
Of course this raises all kinds of concerns. But I like it. Not so much because of the reward (I actually very much dislike the extrinsic reward–can you say bribe?). Talk about throwing money at a problem.
But maybe this program will get people talking about the real challenges related to motivating students.
Any Wienies in Your Teaching?
On May - 19 - 2008
This short article is from a business and marketing blog, but it relates to teaching perfectly. We had an interesting conversation about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation at my Masters class yesterday. And it relates to that as well.
Wienies are extra.
Wienies are what you give the audience after they think they’re already satisfied.
Wienies are what you add when what you have is good – but not good enough.
No boss will demand that you add a wienie. In fact, your boss would prefer that you don’t waste your time with wienies.
A wienie is something you add for the sheer joy of it–not for any extrinsic reward or result or expectation. A wienie is what takes a project from good to great–a lesson or unit from beneficial to memorable.
The Cost of Smarts
On May - 8 - 2008
Is the pursuit of intelligence–intelligent? This from an interesting short article in the New York Times:
Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced option. It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning — a gradual process — instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they’ve apparently learned is when to stop.