Thoughts on Motivation for Achievement

While reading through the journal article for this week by Turner and Meyer, I was not surprised to find that most students do not prefer challenging activities in the classroom. When applied to the classroom, the idea of moderate challenge is that in order to be truly successful, students need to take risks. Atkinson found that incentive to solve a problem would be highest when the probability of success was moderate, or around 50%. However, a study showed that students consistently chose activities where there was a 77% success level, which indicates that, overall, students in elementary and middle school classrooms don't feel comfortable or confident taking academic risks.

It is understandable why these kids fear failure considering the set up of most classrooms today and kids' desire to be socially competent and accepted. Many teachers do not create a classroom culture that applauds effort over success, and therefore kids feel pressure to "do things right" in order to avoid looking incompetent in front of their peers.

While reading the article and reflecting on instructional practices in teaching mathematics, I have found that number talks are an extremely effective way to foster conceptual understanding and to create an emotionally supportive environment. It is also a great way to hold students accountable for their thinking.

According to Turner and Meyer, "Instructional practices associated with establishing a learning orientation appeared to create fertile conditions for teaching and learning challenging mathematics." Number talks foster this approach by focusing on effort, growing as a community of learners, allowing for the students to be autonomous in their thinking, and placing less emphasis on having the correct answer.