0.1 Goals, interests and attributions  (Page 5/7)

A caution: seductive details

Even though it is important to stimulate interest in new material somehow, it is also possible to mislead or distract students accidentally by addinginappropriate, but stimulating features to new material (Garner, et al., 1992; Harp&Mayer, 1998). Distractions happen a number of ways, such as any of these among others:

• deliberately telling jokes in class
• using colorful illustrations or pictures
• adding interesting bits of information to a written or verbal explanation

When well chosen, all of these moves can indeed arouse students’ interest in a new topic. But if they do not really relate to the topic at hand, they maysimply create misunderstandings or prevent students from focusing on key material. As with most other learning processes, however, there are individualdifferences among students in distractability, students who are struggling, and are more prone to distraction and misunderstanding than students who arealready learning more successfully (Sanchez&Wiley, 2006). On balance the best advice is probably therefore to use strategies to arouse situational interest , but to assess students’ responses to them continually and as honestly as possible. The key issue is whether students seem to learn because ofstimulating strategies that you provide, or in spite of them.

Motives related to attributions

Attributions are perceptions about the causes of success and failure. Suppose that you get a low mark on a test and are wondering what caused the low mark. You canconstruct various explanations for—make various attributions about—this failure. Maybe you did not study very hard; maybe the testitself was difficult; maybe you were unlucky; maybe you just are not smart enough. Each explanation attributes the failure to a different factor. Theexplanations that you settle upon may reflect the truth accurately—or then again, they may not. What is important about attributions is that theyreflect personal beliefs about the sources or causes of success and failure. As such, they tend to affect motivation in various ways, depending on the natureof the attribution (Weiner, 2005).

Locus, stability, and controllability

Attributions vary in three underlying ways: locus, stability, and controllability. Locus of an attribution is the location (figuratively speaking) of the source of success or failure. If you attribute a top score on a test to your ability orto having studied hard, then the locus is internal; that is, being smart and studying are factors within you. If you attribute the score to the test’s having easy questions, then the locus is external; in other words, your success is due to something outside of you. The stability of an attribution is its relative permanence. If you attribute the score to your ability, then the source of success is relatively stable— by definition, ability is a relatively lasting quality. If you attribute a top score to the effort you put in to studying, then the source of success is unstable— effort can vary and has to be renewed on each occasion or else it disappears. The controllability of an attribution is the extent to which the individual can influence it. If you attribute a top score to your effort at studying, then the source of success isrelatively controllable— you can influence effort simply by deciding how much to study. But if you attribute the score to simple luck, then the source of the success is uncontrollable— there is nothing that can influence random chance.