AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
The effort to complete the task is stronger in the student the
more strongly convinced they are that the content of the
tasks, the conditions for its implementation and the
decision on its meaning depends on them.
Motivating a student toward activities increases a positive
relationship and a positive attitude to the task, which is
easily applicable in any element of the situation.
Motivation and student efforts raise tasks that stimulate
curiosity, interest and real possibilities to satisfy them.
An important factor in motivating student learning may be
the need for subordination, adaptation to teachers, parents
or classmates, rather than the need of acceptance, which is
considered the main source of motivation at all.
Motivation to action is increased if the student considers
the fulfillment and performance of the task to be a success.
However, the following may also apply: If the student
perceives the non-fulfillment of the task to be a "failure",
the motivation to complete the task increases.
Motivation to fulfill schoolwork depends on the duration
and intensity that the task creates, or the accompanying
circumstances.
Not only in light of the level of the task's fulfillment, but
also due to the general, broad learning objectives, it is
necessary to try to transform student motivation from the
outside to the inside.
Since multiple approaches and proposals to improve the
presence of motivation in teaching have been appearing in
literature for quite a long time, let us assume that the area of
motivation is certainly no novelty for teachers. That presumption
moves us to search for answers to the question: Is the student
motivation toward learning activities a weakness of the
educational process? Partial answer is found by examining the
quality of the lesson's management by the teacher, shown in the
next part of the text.
1.1 Research of motivation – motivation initiated by teacher
When explaining the concept of motivation we focused less on
the concept of activation (just implicitly) inherently connected to
the lesson. Motivation along with activation during a lesson
represents a conscious and energetic attitude that targets the
teacher's active physical and mental activity towards the
students. If the teacher does not know the ways to properly
motivate and activate students, which incidentally M. Zelina
mentions to be the key problems of our education, then the
teacher's action at the lesson "... is necessary reduced to
prescriptive commanding, ordering, which ultimately can lead to
the fact that although students know the topic to some extent, the
quality of learning the topic and its long-term memorization are
very problematic, and particularly questionable is the
relationship of students to what they learn." (Zelina, M., 2002, p.
6). E. Petlák agrees with the opinions that say "good motivation
is half of the teachers and students' work". It is just a shame that
more teachers are not able to appreciate this experience obtained
by teachers (2014, p. 68). From the study of a number of
considerations of functionality and justification regarding the
induction and enhancing of students' motivation during lessons,
it appears to us that it is still necessary to stress the essential part
of the educational process, and indeed there is a tendency that it
should appear more in the classroom. We have therefore decided
to seek an answer to the question Is students' motivation to
learning activities a weakness of the educational process?, as
well as to express a view on the lesson management quality. We
formulate a partial response by some of the research results:
observation of lessons on different subjects subjected to
microanalysis confirmed the presence of motivation during
lessons;
teachers consider the methods for motivating to include, in
particular, a conversation, praise, didactic games, narration,
demonstration, brainstorming, problem and cooperation
method, the most frequently used in practice are input
motivational methods in the following order: motivational
speaking, motivational interviewing, motivational
demonstration;
teachers applied the ongoing motivation methods in this
order: praise – encouragement – rewards, updating the
curriculum, motivational appeals, evaluation courts of a
critical nature (verbal reactions to student rejections,
punishment),
for teachers, the main approaches to the formation of
student motivation were dominated by thee approach to
boost motivation through evaluation (praise,
encouragement, rewards compared to verbal reactions of
rejection, criticism and punishments)
The problem is not that motivation would be lacking, but
rather that it is not fully appreciated and implemented so as
to effectively contribute to the effectiveness of the
educational process. (Petlák, E., et al., 2008).
The numerous research that indicates the presence, knowledge
and development of motivation in teaching, includes those that
view quality when applying the micro-educational analysis
method of the teaching unit via the motivation index (Im). It is
the index through which we can express when we are observing
a lesson via the analytical category system AS9 scheme (we note
that in addition to Im, we can use it to express the development
of cognitive functions and the education management style index
on a scale of directivity and non-directivity). (Zelina, M., 2006).
Specifically, it is the index used to monitor the motivation
elicited by the teacher in students in the classroom through their
verbal reactions. Based on Im the teacher can be fairly well
assessed whether they are the one who positively motivates
students, or rather the one who applies criticism, punishment, or
exhortation in the process of student activation and motivation.
L. Alberty (2002), who measured the presence of motivation
initiated by the teacher through the micro-education analysis
method, notes that the measured Im values in elementary school
teachers suggest that we cannot talk about a thought-through
motivational activity. Category of praise, rewards, positive
evaluation practices, did not appear even once for some. Also the
category of introducing the learning subject in an interesting
way, which completes the code of positive motivation, was not
measured in half of the surveyed teachers (N = 25). Another
research, which was targeted on the proposition of to what extent
teachers use a creative and humanistic style of interaction with
students, and which areas of the style structure are developed
more and which less, was answered by M. Zelinová (2004).
Micro-educational analysis results and the quality of the
educational process testified the following:
1. higher index of acceptance, positive motivation in all areas –
particularly trust in students, encouragement, interesting
introduction of the curriculum, as well as more incentives on the
development of cognitive functions; when comparing the values
it was found that they were in favor of alternative education.
2. during the standard lesson, teachers speak much more than
teachers in alternative lessons. This means that students have
fewer opportunities for personal verbal expression.
3. from the monitored structure of the verbal interactions,
teachers in standard lessons used a lot more instructions for
work, giving orders, explaining the subject, unreasonably
talking, lecturing, moralizing or repeating the answers of
students. From this finding it can be further assumed that the
teacher verbally "floods" the lesson and thus limits the space for
expression of students for their independent work and limits the
self-organization of student work
4. the results also suggest that students obtained a higher mean
score in the areas of criticism and negative student evaluation
from experience than teachers from experience.
Similarly, L. Fenyvesiová (2006) focused in her research on
identifying the interaction style of teachers in terms of the degree
of directivity and the degree of motivation. The measured high
directivity index values also indicate a finding that teachers
apply such teaching practice and methods, in which their
- page 55 -