Mindsets and Motivation
67
• Sample hooks for learning from the “Helping Students Create Hooks and Connections to Learning” activity • Metacognitive goals • SMART goals with a goal-setting process plan • A transcribed “Grit” interview • The “Turning Disappointments Into Opportunities for Growth” strategy example • A graded assignment analysis using the strategy presented in “Analyzing Graded Assignments”
Summary Academically and in life, motivation is the force that helps propel students forward. Setting goals and determining values will guide and direct their efforts and give students a reason to try and a destination to move toward. These goals and values help students develop the motivation required to put forth the effort to plan, monitor progress, and continue to persist despite obstacles, roadblocks, and bumps in the road to academic success. Self-efficacy and mindset affect whether students believe in their own ability and think their efforts have an impact on their academic outcomes. Students who lack self-efficacy and a growth mindset will have trouble maintaining motivation and momentum toward achieving their goals. When students challenge themselves, negative thoughts can distract or prevent them from reaching their goals. Learning to talk back to our negative thoughts with a more positive response helps students maintain the motivation and momentum necessary to keep moving forward. Instead of accepting everything they think as truth, students learn to engage in a practice of challenging their own negative thinking. Developing a growth mindset makes it possible for them to choose a response and a thought process that maintain their motivation to continue to work toward goals. Lastly, it’s hard to stay motivated when you cannot see your progress or do not feel like the results that you achieve are under your control. When students develop strategies for evaluating learning through feedback, reflection, and revision, they gain the insight necessary to continue to grow toward their vision and goals. Practicing strategies for positive mindsets, goal setting, cultivating grit and resilience, and evaluating their own output and learning help students have more control over their level of motivation as they work toward becoming a more self-regulated learner. In the next chapter, we will consider how emotions affect a student’s ability to stay motivated and persist toward their goals.
©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
Adding the preceding items to their strategies binder will keep the binder a relevant and current resource for their independent learning journey. The strategies binder will be valuable to educators as comprehensive reports on how individual students are progressing in their goals and classwork.
