Week 9 Motivation

1) I think most of the students are extrinsically motivated. many of them don't do what they should unless there is something in it for them or they are going to get praised for it. There are a few that do what they should and complete assignments they were given or go above and beyond because they want t but there are very few of them.
2) There are times I think, when intrinsic motivation becomes extrinsic when a teacher adds a reward, then all of a sudden something that was and should be common place behavior needs some sort of motivation to be accomplished. There were things to me that seemed like things that the students should naturally be able to do on there own butt because of their life situations they still needed the extrinsic to help them to make right choices. On the other hand it was neat to see when some students transferred from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic...I mean to say there were some kids that made the good choices on their own because they knew it was the right thing to do. One little girl made friends with another little girl that had no friends even though it was unpopular. She felt better and gained a friend.
3) I am not sure how to explain why but I think that in many ways the best is not achieved until there is a reason to go do it. There are exceptions but I think that necessity is the mother of invention and reward can be a great motivator for young children that see praise or extrinsic rewards as a necessity.
4) On classroom level my teacher had "fun time." When the class performed well they would riecieve a letter and when they spelled out fun time they would recieve 15 extra minutes of something. They would roll a dice and what it landed on they would get to do, like art or recess, or reading. On a student level she would give out "O Wows." I liked this because it focused on the good students and what they were doing right and gave them a reward for it because many times those that are being bad are the ones that recieve all of the attention and those that are on task recieve no attenttion. The problem this might cause is that the students begin to look at their good behavior as conditional, "am I going to get an 'O Wow'?"
5) I think there are a number of things mixed together that make up my personal theory but I think I have seen more of the behaviorist side while in the classroom. There is a lot of conditioning that is done in the classroom and it starts I think, with behaviorism. I think that they should get to a point where they are self motivated but there is training that has to happen first and that is why I am more a behaviorist. I am only speaking from my experience, not from personal belief. What I found was that things don't always work out how we think they should.