Meditation on Motivation Home     

Motivation in Social Studies

Data Collection

As the year progressed, I gathered a great deal of data about my research question.  Much of that data is summarized here.

Course Survey (Click here to see an actual copy of our survey):

A survey was issued to the students in the class on five separate occasions throughout the year.  On each occasion, student motivation was measured along with the degree of difficulty for the course, the students' level of enjoyment for the course, and the value of the content to the students' lives.     An example of an acutal survey's results are as follows:

Student Survey  Results (March 2001):

From this data I have concluded that at that time, students were very motivated to participate in my course and that they valued and enjoyed the content they were studying.   At different times throughout the year, I found that motivation would frequently decline as the value of content and enjoyment also declined.  In turn, as value and enjoyment increase, so too does motivation.   I believe that is a positive correlation between motivation, value of content, and student enjoyment, though it is important for me to state that no scientific analysis of this correlation has yet been conducted.   As a teacher, this validates my belief that my students will be more motivated to perform in my class if I can design curriculum that is both relevant and enjoyable for them to study.    I think that in order to do this effectively, I must seek my students' input into what it is they feel they should learn about my course content and how they would enjoy doing this.   

Anecdotal Evidence & Student Reflections:

In keeping a journal this year, there were several occassions on which student behaviors yielded insight into levels of their motivation.  What follows are examples of student behaviors that I observed this year or comments students made to me in their reflective activities:

    Students continually stayed after class to discuss ideas for their final projects with me.   The students frequently commented about how they were nervous about presenting to audiences and wanted to make sure they did a good job.

    Students frequently brought in articles from magazines or newspapers that dealt with our course content.   Three students even taped television programs that dealt with topics I had taught them and gave me these tapes to use with my classes next year.   

    In choosing topics for their final projects, many students told me that they chose their topic because "it was very relevant to my life."   In psychology, many students chose to complete projects about Alzheimer's disease to better understand the illness their grandparents had, and one girl chose to complete a project about grieving to better understand how to deal with her own mother's death.   

    During the political science "voter education symposium" many students told me that they had "never worked so hard on a project."  The reason for their efforts was due to the fact that they knew they would have to present their information to a live audience and that they did not want to be embarassed.   

    On student evaluations of my course, the vast majority of students commented that the projects made them more interested in what we were studying.   

   Introduction    Examples of Real World Projects         Process           Reflection