Motivation and Self-efficacy

In all of the schooling I have had so far, the times I have been interested in the material and been motivated to do well have been the times when I have succeeded the most. It is not coincidence that this is the case; Chapter 6 focuses on elements of motivation and how to get students to be active in their learning. I feel that this is one of the most important things in student's learning process. The two main focuses of this chapter were self-efficacy and motivation. Self-efficacy is the level at which a student believes in their abilities; if a student has a low level of self-efficacy then they probably do not have a lot of confidence in their abilities to read well, or perform well in a specific subject area. When I was tutoring at an inner city school, I could tell that many of the students did not have the self-efficacy to succeed in many of their tasks. When they finally understood the material and solved a problem on their own I could tell that they developed more and more confidence and little by little they started to believe in themselves. Motivation, the other topic in the chapter, was mainly about being able to apply material to student's lives and make things applicable. It said that students learn better when they can apply the text to what they already know. I know in math that will sometimes be hard to do with certain topics; for instance, long division, they will probably rarely use that throughout their lifetime, but making a connection will help them better be motivated to learn it. Motivation also involves getting them to think: asking questions, making them curious, letting them come up with what they think happens next. All of these things are great ways for students to become more motivated to succeed and become more interested in the material.