What is the role of motivation in literacy development?
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| Motivation Copy Right Ker GL 2012 |
Motivation definitely play an significantly important role in literacy development. A lack of motivation in students is at the ROOT of many of the problems the teachers face in teaching. (What teachers can learn about reading motivation through conversations with children, Edmunds and Bauserman, p.414). Therefore, in order to get the students start to read, we have to stimulate the main factors with a right method.
The articles that shared by other classmates have the same theme, control and connection. Edmunds and Bauserman talk about few main factors that get students excited about reading including personal interest, choices, knowledge gain, characteristic of the book and etc. If we would take all these factors into consideration, definitely will give the students a sense of control of they want to read, and they will be more motivated to pick up a book.
The factors can be due biological differences (boys's literacy skills are lower than girls due to biological differences), or might be because of positive/ negative reinforcements, for example rewards/ punishment. Each students are a different individual, way to motivate students definitely need to think of the age group, gender, cultural background and etc. Some of the factors that mentioned in those articles are more suitable for primary year students, for example involve parents in reading club one a month (Edmunds and Bauserman). However this might not work well for middle year and high school students. What drives them to read might come from other aspect, for example their peers and emotion.
Everything happen for a reason. It is very important for us as a teacher, to be aware of all these factors and differences between each students before jump into any conclusion/ judgement about the students' ability.
Hi Ker,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that every student's motivation comes about for different reasons. Whether it is social, biological or cognitive factors affecting motivation, we as teachers need to find ways to peak student interests towards literacy.
I think one of the most influential ways of doing this, is by increasing a student's intrinsic motivation. It doesn't matter if they are in grade 1 or grade 11, if we can reach into their inner beliefs about reading and learning, we can really change their approach to literacy. I do not believe that extrinsic rewards and punishments help with this, and in many cases may even deter students away from reading.
Now, this is obviously easier said than done, but as you stated, and stated in many of the articles, enabling students to relate to the material, make connections and create memorable experiences are some of the best approaches to increase their intrinsic beliefs about literacy.
With a little bit of hard work from us, I think we can begin to reach our students on a deeper level and really improve their views and skills of literacy in and out of the classroom!
Thanks for the great post!
ps. Awesome picture on your blog!
Hi Ker - Yes, the picture is great! What a visual! I think one of the key components of motivation that all of these articles missed is the social aspect of reading and the power of relationships to motivate. Looking through all the Lit Histories it is evident to me that some for a relatedness that occurs involving reading creates (ignites?) a degree of motivation in the student to read more and seek out more ways to relate to others through books.
ReplyDeleteBe care about the assumptions made in some of the reading on biology and gender in relation to literacy. The research on this is tenuous at best. And, the researchers that have this biological deterministic stance often make great leaps from small findings. For example, though boys, in general, have slightly worse hearing than girls, we can not jump to the conclusion that they will have a harder time learning the sounds of letters. The research just isn't there for that....yet. Thanks for the post - Jim