Interest-Inducing Teaching and Motivation to Learn

Even the students’ perception of the teacher influences the motivation. The students’ attitudes and achievements change if they perceive the teacher as enthusiastic, cultivating, respecting, and trustworthy. The teacher himself exemplifies motivation if he evinces enthusiasm and interest.

The review of the literature shows that the class climate is today measured by the students’ subjective perception, since the students’ feeling and perception of what is around them influence their involvement in the relations in the classroom and in learning in the learning community (Anderson, 1982; Huesmann and Guerra, 1997).

According to the researches, a positive climate promotes the students’ self-esteem and promotes their scholastic performances.

Classes with a climate of competitiveness, hostility, and alienation cause anxiety and lack of comfort and do not allow the scholastic development of many of the students. Classes in which there is reciprocal support among the students and between the students and the teacher allow the development of self-esteem, inculcate security, induce calm, cultivate personal responsibility, and willingness for involvement and sense of belonging (Lewis, Schaps, and Watson, 1996).

2.3.6 Interest-Inducing Teaching and Motivation to

Motivation is an energizing and directing process that preserves the behavior of people to achieve the intended goal. It reflects the entirety of the reasons that cause the person to behave in a certain manner in a certain situation. Motivation is a factor that addresses the strength of behavior on the one hand and direction of the behavior on the other hand. Motivation cannot be disconnected from the student’s beliefs on the importance of topics and therefore motivation determines whether the student will choose a way that leads to goal A or to goal B.

Keller (1983) notes three types of motivation: extrinsic, intrinsic cognitive, and intrinsic emotional.

• Extrinsic: The student acts so that he will be liked (desirability), to avoid punishment (external reward), or to compensate for lacks.

• Intrinsic cognitive: The student learns because he acknowledges the importance of learning (and not because he enjoys it).

• Intrinsic emotional: The student learns out of enjoyment and interest in the study material (he likes the subject and therefore he learns) or because of a sense of challenge (problem solving).

According to Ames (1990), the student who is motivated by extrinsic motivation will be satisfied with simpler tasks and will be willing to invest less effort in the learning process than will a student with intrinsic motivation, who will assume upon himself more tasks that constitute a challenge and will have a higher level of motivation.

The theoretical-ideal situation according to Neo-Marxism – the Frankfurt School (for instance, Erich Frumm) on the one hand and according to Marxists such as Anton Semionovitz Makarnko (author of the pedagogical Poem and other books) is to attain the situation in which the student acts out of emotional intrinsic motivation, after he has identified in himself what interests him, has chosen directions of action, and adheres to them on the way to the achievement of the goal. Thus, the student has:

• A positive emotional experience and feelings of interest and enjoyment, of freedom, choice, self-integrity and wholeness,

tranquility, and self-fulfillment (and perhaps even an answer to existential questions such as ‘who am I’, which contribute to the construction of the self-identity), which derive from the lack of pressures, the disappearance of anxiety, and the willingness to try new things.

• Profound understanding of the learned material, since when people learn from intrinsic motivation, they learn in-depth and in-breadth, and they also learn things that are not dictated by the teacher. This student will converse on the study topic with his significant others, will read texts related to the topic, will build for himself a map of thinking, and will organize the concepts in their correct contexts. All this will lead to the learner’s possession of extensive knowledge on the study topic.

• Reinforcement of social relations. The student who enjoys learning will attempt to find students who are similar to him, so as to develop with them learning relations that can develop into social relations. It is necessary to be aware and to prevent the reverse phenomenon – a student who is immersed in his hobby may reduce his social relations.

In the present research, the term motivation addresses a constellation that includes the element of the value of the task for the student, the element of expectation, and the emotional element (Pintrich, 1999; Pintrich and De Groot, 1990). These are expressed in that the student sets for himself goals that interest him. He believes in his ability to accomplish the riddle and he has feelings towards the riddle that include pride and success. The student’s expectations and the beliefs influence his efforts in the studies.

Giving the student the right to choose the riddle that inspires motivation in him influences both his performance of the riddle and his process of learning (Ames and Archer, 1999).

Assor (2001) maintains that the two main measures of motivation are strength and autonomy:

• Strength – the degree of the desire to invest in the relevant activity.

• Sense of autonomy – is the desire to invest perceived and felt by the individual due to his choice and due to the

activity that he can understand and identify with or is it based on unjustified external coercion (Perkins, 1998).

Sternberg (1992) asserts that from an early age the child differentiates in his reciprocal relations between people and situations. The interactions are a part of the child’s thinking style.

Following these interactions, the child receives inner or external reward and this reward is what motivates his decision.

2.3.7 Characteristics of an Innovative Learning