Woolfolk et al., Educational Psychology Answer Key Part 2

44) The following sentence is true about the relationship between motivation and cultural diversity. A) When minority students have culturally relevant materials, they can be more motivated to learn, and teachers are more likely to hold their situational interest. B) Some cultures raise children to be more motivated than others. C) Regardless of cultural backgrounds, teachers can do little to "catch and hold" students' situational interest. D) Students' life experiences really do not influence the learning process in important ways. Answer: A Explanation: A) When designing instruction and choosing instructional materials teachers should keep in mind culturally relevant learning materials can influence students' motivation and situational interest, which can ultimately effect student achievement. True/False Questions 45) When individuals are naturally interested in a particular activity, they are intrinsically motivated. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Intrinsic motivation is the natural human tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we pursue personal interests and exercise our capabilities. Because the activity that we are intrinsically motivated to perform is satisfying and rewarding, we do not need incentives or punishments. 46) Maslow's approach to motivation is a humanistic view of motivation. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Humanistic interpretations of motivation emphasize personal freedom, choice, self-determination, and striving for personal growth. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an influential humanistic explanation of motivation. 47) According to the expectancy x value theory, motivation increases as expectancy of success and the value of rewards increase. Answer: TRUE Explanation: According to the expectancy x value theory, motivation is a product of these two forces. If one has high expectations for success at a high value goal, motivation will be strong. 48) Students who have performance goals are interested in improving their skills, no matter how awkward they may appear in the process. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Students who set performance goals care about demonstrating their ability to others. The evaluation of their performance by others is valued over what they actually learn. 49) Students who hold a performance-approach goal orientation want to look good in the eyes of others. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Students with performance goals care about demonstrating their ability to others. 50) Work-avoidant learners feel successful when they do not have to try very hard, when the work is easy for them, or when they can simply "goof off." Answer: TRUE Explanation: Work-avoidant learners do not want to learn or to look smart, but just want to avoid work. They feel successful when they do not have to try hard. 51) In addition to having specific attainable goals, and supportive social relationships, effective goal-setting in the classroom requires feedback, goal framing, and goal acceptance. Answer: TRUE Explanation: In addition to having specific goals and creating supportive social relationships, three factors make goal setting in the classroom effective: feedback, goal framing, and goal acceptance. 52) High needs for self-improvement are consistent with an entity view of ability. Answer: FALSE Explanation: An entity view of ability assumes that ability is a stable, uncontrollable trait. 53) Young children are more likely to hold an entity view than an incremental view of ability. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Young children tend to hold an exclusively incremental view of ability. These children tend to believe that effort is the same as intelligence. 54) Attribution theories of motivation describe how an individual's explanations, justifications, and excuses influence their motivation. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Attribution theories are descriptions of how individuals’ explanations, justifications, and excuses influence their motivation and behaviour. 55) Viewing a cause of failure as stable is likely to lower aspirations for future success. Answer: TRUE Explanation: The stability dimension is closely tied to expectations about the future. If students attribute their failure to stable factors such as the difficulty of the subject, they will expect to keep failing in that subject. 56) Weiner believes that there are two important dimensions that have important implications for motivation: (1) responsibility and (2) stability. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Bernard Weiner describes three dimensions that characterize attributed causes for successes and failure: (1) locus; (2) stability; and (3) controllability. 57) Students with a mastery goal orientation are not afraid of failing. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Mastery-oriented students tend to value achievement and see ability as improvable. They are not fearful of failure, because failing does not threaten their sense of competence and self-worth. 58) Nearly all researchers agree that teachers should make learning fun for students in order to promote good learning. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Many researchers draw upon studies showing that learning that is fascinating but contains irrelevant information (seductive details) can actually impede the learning process. 59) Learning and information processing are influenced by both cold cognition of reasoning and problem solving and hot cognition or emotion. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Researchers today note that learning and information processing are influenced by both the cold cognition of reasoning and problem solving as well as hot cognition (emotion and mood). 60) Research exists to support the claim that students' emotions are related to their learning goal orientation. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Emotions are both causes and consequences for learning and motivation. Researchers tested a model that relates different goal orientations to boredom and other emotions. The research found that emotions could be predicted according to students’ goal orientations (mastery goals, performance-approach goals, and performanceavoidance goals). 61) Researchers have found that students who hold performance-avoidance goals are less likely to experience boredom or hopelessness. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Students with performance-avoidance goals are more likely to experience anxiety, hopelessness, and shame. 62) In general, performance is low when the level of anxiety is high. Answer: TRUE Explanation: Anxiety can be both a cause and an effect of school failure – students do poorly because they are anxious, and their poor performance increases their anxiety, creating a vicious cycle for the learner. 63) Anxiety can interfere with attention, learning, and testing even at the same time. Answer: TRUE Explanation: One model of academic anxiety proposes that students with high levels of anxiety are less effective at organizing information, engaging in effective study strategies, and performing on tests. 64) According to the TARGET model, teachers are encouraged to recognize students for their accomplishments, especially improving their own personal best to influence student motivation to learn. Answer: TRUE Explanation: The third TARGET area is recognition for accomplishments. More specifically, recognition should be given for improving on their own personal best, for tackling difficult tasks, for persisting, and for creativity. According to some research, interest, performance, attributions to effort, and task involvement were higher after personalized comments. 65) Goal structure refers to the amount of time students give themselves to complete the task. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Goal structure is the way students relate to others who are also working toward a particular goal. 66) Researchers suggest using work sheets and standard assignments for writing tasks with ethnic minority students rather than giving students writing tasks with cultural contexts. Answer: FALSE Explanation: Embedding student writing tasks in cultural contexts is a way to catch and hold ethnic minority students’ situational interest. Completion Questions 67) High concern with how one looks to others is characteristic of people with ________ goals. Answer: performance 68) Psychological and physical reactions causing a person to be alert, attentive, and wide awake is called ________. Answer: arousal 69) Problem solving, emotional management, and avoidance are strategies that people use to cope with ________. Answer: anxiety 70) Ability is perceived as a stable, uncontrollable trait by people who adopt a(n) ________ view of ability. Answer: entity 71) The interest state that arouses, directs, and maintains behaviour is ________. Answer: motivation 72) The need to experience choice and control in what we do and how we do it is called ________. Answer: self-determination 73) Students who come to believe that negative outcomes are uncontrollable and that one’s efforts will result in failure have developed a condition called ________. Answer: learned helplessness 74) Whereas mastery-oriented students value achievement and success, ________ students try to protect themselves from situations in which they will not look good to others. Answer: failure-avoiding 75) Students who focus on learning goals because they value achievement and see their ability as being improvable are said to be ________ students. Answer: mastery-oriented 76) Students who believe that their failures are the result of personal incompetence and that they have little control to alter their position are described as ________ students. Answer: failure-accepting 77) Sharon believes if she is an outstanding soccer player she will be well liked by her peers. Thus, Sharon place a great amount of ________ value on playing soccer. Answer: importance or attainment Explanation: Importance or attainment value refers to the significance an individual places on doing well on a task. 78) The natural tendency to engage in certain types of activities is called ________ motivation. Answer: intrinsic 79) Personal freedom, choice, intrinsic motivation, and self-determination are emphasized in ________ theories of motivation. Answer: humanistic 80) In Maslow's hierarchy, the survival, safety, belonging, and self-esteem needs comprise the general category called ________ needs. Answer: deficiency 81) How an individual's explanations, justifications, and excuses influence motivation is ________ theory. Answer: attribution 82) Individuals who feel that they are responsible for their own successes or failures have a(n) ________ locus. Answer: internal Short Answer Questions 83) Mr. Cardot has been using a behavioural approach to motivation in his second-grade classroom. He gives stickers for completing assignments, for answering questions correctly, and for other things such as working quietly. He recently noticed that none of his students could answer questions about the setting of a story, but he had taught lessons about the setting and discussed the settings of several stories. Students had eagerly answered questions and received stickers. Now that he is revisiting the topic, his students don’t remember what they learned. Suggest how Mr. Cardot might alter his approach and achieve integrated regulation. Answer: Mr. Cardot is using a behavioural approach with extrinsic rewards, yet he wants his students to achieve long-term learning. Mr. Cardot’s students appear to be working for the stickers, i.e., external regulation, as evidenced by their eagerness to answer questions and receive stickers. Mr. Cardot might try an approach to motivation that taps into students’ interest in learning. Integrated regulation involves participating in a task because it is both interesting and has extrinsic reward value. To hold student interest, he might get students involved in creating a story setting. He might include an extrinsic reward for accomplishing the task 84) Define motivation, and differentiate between behavioural, humanistic, cognitive, and sociocultural approaches to the interpretation of motivation. Answer: Motivation is defined as an internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behaviour. Behavioural approaches emphasize the roles of rewards and incentives in motivating behaviour. An understanding of student motivation, according to the behavioural views, begins with a careful analysis of the incentives and rewards available in the classroom. B.F. Skinner is a key theorist for the behavioural view of motivation. In contrast, humanistic theorists emphasize a belief that people are continually motivated by the inborn need to fulfill their potential. From this perspective, motivating students means to encourage their inner resources their sense of competence, self-esteem, autonomy, and self-actualization. Maslow and Deci are key theorists of the humanistic view of motivation. Cognitive theorists believe that behaviour is determined by our thinking, not merely by whether we have been rewarded or punished for the behaviour in the past. People are viewed to be active and curious and searching for information needed to solve personally relevant problems. Weiner's attribution theory is a good example of the cognitive approach to motivation. Many social cognitive explanations of motivation can be characterized as expectancy x value theories that emphasize individuals’ expectation for success combined with how they value the goal. Locke and Latham, and Bandura are key theorists of this view. Sociocultural views of motivation emphasize participation in communities of practice in which people engage in activities in order to maintain their identities and their interpersonal relations within the community. Consequently, students are motivated to learn if they are members of a classroom or school community that values learning. The concept of identity is central to sociocultural views of motivation. People are motivated to learn the values and practices of their community in order to keep their identity as community members. Lave and Wenger are key theorists for the sociocultural view of motivation. 85) List the seven levels of needs as described by Maslow. What are the implications for learning when students' deficiency needs are not being satisfied? Contrast this situation against one in which the students' being needs are not satisfied. Answer: Survival, safety, belonging, and self-esteem are "deficiency" needs in Maslow's hierarchy. When these needs are met, motivation to fulfill them decreases. The need to know and understand (intellectual achievement), aesthetic needs, and selfactualization are "being" needs. When they are met, motivation to seek further fulfillment increases, because being needs are never completely satisfied. 86) Define and differentiate between entity and incremental beliefs about ability. With what types of attributions and goal orientations are each associated? Answer: Entity beliefs assume that ability is an internal, stable, and uncontrollable trait. Because it cannot be changed, there is little reason to try to improve one's skills. Incremental beliefs, on the other hand, assume that ability is internal, unstable, and controllable. By working hard and applying oneself, ability can be improved and greater success realized. Entity beliefs are usually associated with performance goals ("trying to look good"), whereas incremental beliefs are associated with learning goals ("trying to improve oneself"). Incremental beliefs and learning goals are generally productive of increased feelings of self-efficacy. 87) Discuss the implications of attribution theory for school achievement in reference to the specific cases in which success or failure is primarily attributed to (a) ability, (b) effort, (c) task difficulty, and (d) luck. Answer: Attribution theories describe how individuals interpret the causes of success or failure. The importance of such attributions is that they influence students' self- perceptions and future aspirations by treating success as something they can personally control. Attributions vary along the dimensions of internal vs. external, stable vs. unstable, and controllable vs. uncontrollable. Students who view failures as internal ("I am dumb"), stable ("I will remain dumb"), and uncontrollable ("There's nothing I can do to change") risk the danger of becoming resigned to failure and susceptible to "learned helplessness." Teachers need to try to help students perceive that effort (an internal, but controllable factor) can be the primary determinant of their success or failure. Task difficulty and luck are external factors, the former stable and the latter unstable. External attributions that are not controllable may be indicative of resignation to fate or chance (rather than individual effort) as the determinant of success. 88) Anxiety generally interferes with learning and performance. Explain the reasons for this effect and suggest ways in which teachers can help high-anxiety students to achieve better grades. Answer: Anxiety interferes with tests of student abilities as well as an effect of school failure creating a vicious cycle of anxiety and poor performance. There are two models for understanding how anxiety interferes with learning and performance. In the cognitive interference model, a student who has presumably learned the material may be blocked from retrieving the material from memory. The second model suggests that anxious students may be less effective with organizing information, engaging in effective study strategies, and performing on tests even in the absence of evaluative pressure. Highly anxious students may be so preoccupied with their symptoms that they are unable to concentrate on the material. These two models suggest that anxiety affects the behaviour of learners in the areas of preparation, performance, and reflection. Teachers can help anxious students by helping them recognize the sources of their anxiety and how to interpret them. They should also help students to set realistic goals that allow them to succeed. They can also help students adopt effective study techniques. Finally, teachers can limit the number of triggers for anxiety in the classroom. 89) What is meant by the term "bounded choice" and how does it influence student learning? Answer: Bounded choices mean we give students a range of options that set valuable tasks for them, but also enable them to follow their personal interests. Bounded choices positively influence student learning by providing students with supportive autonomy and intrinsic task value. Case Studies Trina is an average-ability science student, but she is in danger of receiving a failing grade due to her low test scores. "I know the information when I study at home," she said to Mrs. Kirby, "but as soon as you pass out the test, I get so nervous that I can barely remember my name. Then, as I think about how badly I'm going to do, I get even more nervous." 90) How can we interpret the negative effects of anxiety on Trina's test performances? That is, how is anxiety likely to hinder her performances? Answer: Trina's anxiety is likely to hinder her performance in three ways. First, her negative thoughts do not allow her to focus her attention on the material to be learned. Second, her anxious thoughts can negatively influence her ability to learn new material, especially material that may be disorganized or difficult. Finally, like most highly anxious students, Trina probably has inadequate test-taking skills. Thus, teaching Trina how to relax may not be a sufficient strategy for increasing her test performance. She could also benefit from direct instruction on critical learning strategies (e.g., good note taking skills) and test-taking skills. 91) Suggest some strategies that you could use to help Trina to be successful if you were her teacher. Answer: First you will want to identify what type(s) of coping strategies Trina relies upon when she is anxious. She may engage in problem-focused self-regulating strategies, emotional management, or avoidance. You could ask her to share her study plan for the upcoming test. If she does not have a plan, more than likely, she is not fully using problem-solving coping strategies. If Trina shares with you that she often talks about her anxious feelings with her family members or friends, then she is using some aspects of emotional management as a coping strategy. You will also want to put Trina in a testing situation in which she cannot avoid taking the test. It may be a good strategy to give her a very short, non-graded test that contains several question types (multiple-choice, essay, true/false, case studies). In terms of testing format, it may also be a useful strategy to provide Trina with a take-home test on occasion. 92) Would you describe Trina as failure-avoiding, failure-accepting, mastery-oriented, or selfdetermined? Explain why you believe Trina has or does NOT have each of these characteristics. Answer: According to Covington's work, Trina can best be described as failure-accepting. She may get frustrated by her inability to control her anxious thoughts and give up. As a student with a failure-acceptance orientation she may have come to believe "I am just not a good test taker, no matter how hard I try." She does not appear to be demonstrating failure-avoiding behaviours such as calling in sick to school in order to miss the exam (which would be failure-avoiding). Moreover, failure-avoiding students tend not to care if they fail and Tina appears to still care as indicated by her claims of frustration. If she were mastery-oriented, we would have more information that she assumes responsibility for her own learning and decreasing her anxiety. She would also try more strategies in order to see incremental improvement. As a mastery-oriented student she might approach her test anxiety by studying more and asking the teacher and her peers for help. The fact that Trina is still studying is evidence of her self-determination, which is the need to experience choice and control in a learning situation. She is making the choice to continue to prepare for exams, but she may struggle with the schedules, rules, and deadlines imposed by the examination process.