Sabtu, 10 Desember 2011 How Interest, Motivation, and Social Goals Influence Motivation Diposting oleh an.pane di 18.17

‘I Not Stupid’ is the first Singaporean movie I have ever watched. I am amazed by the story which is very entertaining yet educative and motivating.  There were also many scenes that made me nod my head because I realized that they were similar to my experiences.  In this reflection, I want to discuss about Kok Pin’s experience.

Kok Pin, who has a personal interest and is very good at drawing, does not get a support from his parents to explore his talent. He is also burdened by the fact that he has to get good scores in math, the subject where he is not interested in. It makes him hard to learn the material. This story’s part reminds me how interest has a big influence on motivation to learn. It is an indicator of intrinsic motivation that affects someone’s sustained attention (Reninnger, in Mayer & Alexander, 2010). Reflecting to most people that I met, I can also see that the perception of intelligence from them is very narrow by relating only particular subjects to intelligence. My father says that most people even get it wrong by measuring your success from how much money you can get from your job.

The only thing that makes Kok Pin study hard is his mother. He wants to make her proud of him although it is hard for him to understand the subject. I remembered how one of my friends became very sad because of getting many bad scores for some subjects in our school. She is a friendly person with good ability in forming a relation with other people. She is also good at singing. However, it seemed like she did not care about it because she just want to make her parents proud of her by getting good scores. She also wanted to be appreciated by her friends who are always mock her. Kok Pin’s and my friend’s experience show how their motivation is affected by social goals. One of which is gaining people’s approval (Santrock, 2009).

To make his mother proud, Kok Pin studies hard every day for that subject. However, he always fails in doing the test. One time, he gets a bad score and becomes frustrated then tried to suicide.  Here, emotion has a relation with his motivation to learn where the failures make him discouraged (Sheppard & McNulty, in Santrock, et.al). The worse thing is his mother punishes him physically every time he faces difficulties in learning or gets bad scores in tests. It affects his emotion and motivation to learn. Through some studies, Saunders & Goddard (2010) finds that children see physical punishment as a block for them to develop and learn.
It makes me think about the importance of understanding the influential factors of someone’s motivation. I hope this knowledge is useful to make me able to understand my students’ motivation in the future.



References:
Mayer, R.E. & Alexander, P.A. (2011).  Handbook of research on learning and instruction. New York: Routledge.
Santrock, J.W. (2009). Educational psychology (4^th Ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Saunders, B.J. & Goddard, C. (2010). Physical punishment in childhood: The rights of the child. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.