Grant Proposal

Grant Proposal

Introduction

Most teachers are frustrated by their unmotivated students. What they may not know is how important the connection is between student motivation and self-determination. Research has shown that motivation is related to whether or not students have opportunities to be autonomous and to make important academic choices. Having choices allows children to feel that they have control or ownership over their own learning. This, in turn, helps them develop a sense of responsibility and self-motivation. When students feel a sense of ownership, they want to engage in academic tasks and persist in learning.

According to Jere Brophy, a leading researcher on student motivation and effective teaching, “Student motivation to learn is an acquired competence developed through general experience but stimulated most directly through modeling, communication of expectations, and direct instruction or socialization by others (especially parents or teachers).”

To understand how we learn, it is first necessary to understand something about how we think. Intelligence is fundamentally a memory-based process. Learning means the dynamic modification of memory. A system can be said to have learned if it is different at time t1 from the way it was at time t0. Under this kind of definition, even forgetting is a kind of learning. Learning means change--change that causes a system to act differently on the basis of what is contained within it. Human memories are in a constant state of dynamic modification.

Learning depends upon inputs. Each word you read and each sight you see changes your memory in some way. The role of memory is the interpretation and the placement of those inputs. Memory must decide what's worth keeping by determining what the meaning of an input is and where it fits in relation to previous knowledge it has already stored.

See it (Problem)

Teachers have observed that after second or third grade, many students begin to show signs of losing their motivation to learn. What happened to that natural eagerness to go to school and the curiosity to learn that is so apparent in preschool, first, and second grade students? Why do students progressively seem to take less responsibility for their own learning? This challenge only grows as students move from upper elementary to secondary school levels. The research summary found in Link 1b and on other linked pages addresses how teachers can help students to be responsible and autonomous learners by giving them appropriate choices.

Many teachers fear that giving students more choice will lead to their losing control over classroom management. Research tells us that in fact the opposite happens. When students understand their role as agent (the one in charge) over their feeling, thinking, and learning behaviors, they are more likely to take responsibility for their learning. To be autonomous learners, however, students need to have some choice and control. And teachers need to learn how to help students develop the ability to make appropriate choices and take control over their own learning.

Interestingly, this phenomenon of taking less and less responsibility for their own learning is related to the fact ...