Book Review : Being Logical

A learners’ reason for wanting to learn something new can affect their motivation. A learner who is self-funded and wants to learn for personal or job progression reasons is likely to be more highly motivated than some who been “told” to attend, sent against their will or who is not interested in the subject.

Teaching theories are as much part of the classroom as the student and the teacher. The effect individual theories have on an environment depends how they are incorporated within the classroom in addition to the influence they have had on the curriculum construction. This essay will briefly look at how motivation theory, cognitive and social cognitive theory along with constructivism have impacted on education and the classroom.

Thoughts can be fleeting, however some of the feelings resulting from thought and can have a long lasting impact on the mental state of a person. In my metacognitive exploration I found an interesting comparison between the way in which I think and approach my past feelings and the methods which Tim O’Brien, from The Things They Carried, and Paul D from Beloved express their thinking about the past. I have discovered that the expression of thoughts, including memories and feelings, is the key to a healthy mental state of a person.

Gladwell says that these KIPP schools are really doing an excellent work with the kids. Gladwell states that half of the students are african american and the rest are hispanic, which is a pretty good amount of the students. Knowing that these kids are from low income families, you really get a feel that these kids are really trying to get a good education and maybe they want to get out of where they live at the moment. Gladwell does not state it, but it is implied that the KIPP schools inforce math more than any other subject. It is well to understand that many of the students that attended a kipp school go on to college and have a good

There are certain beliefs about the world that we can conclude to be absolutely true. For Moore, these beliefs are Common Sense. It is our basic view and common sense of the world that is correct. Moore believes that you have to be justified in what you believe, and common sense is an adequate way of justifying those beliefs. In “A Defense of Common Sense”, Moore argues these claims in 5 different sections. These include: certain knowledge of truisms, the distinction between mental facts and physical facts, the existence of God, God creating all material things and the afterlife, how common sense propositions are to be analyzed concerning sense-data, and how philosophers are confused about analyzing interactions between the external world

This type of motivation is influenced heavily by rewards and external incentives. It also implies the notion that “I have to do something” in order to be compliant with what someone else wants me to do. It is a motivation that is primarily influenced by the hope of attaining tangible items such as prizes, special privileges, or money. Although Drive implies the heavy use of Motivation 2.0 by the corporate world, Pink also draws attention to the fact that schools typically operate under this mode, as well, and that it can have detrimental effects on our students and on learning, in general. Motivation 2.0 is also referred to in the book as the “Carrots and Sticks Approach”, and although it may yield positive results in the short-term, the repeated or incorrect use of extrinsic rewards can actually work against what educators are trying to achieve in terms of truly motivating their students.

In Dwight MacDonald’s Reading and Though, he disagrees with Henry Luce’s Idea of functional curiosity. Luce coined the term “functional curiosity,” meaning “the kind of searching, hungry interest in what is happening everywhere.” MacDonald’s opinion of functional curiosity is that it only encourages practice in reading rather than giving beneficial information. He considers today’s literature as flimsy and overwhelming. MacDonald assumes that all reading done in today’s society is “shallow thinking.” I agree with MacDonald that there is a great amount of mediocre literature floating around, but he does not take into account the technological advancements, the lifestyles of people today, and students.

To investigate whether there were changes in students’ MSLQ motivation factors over the 10 weeks, one-way repeated measures MANOVA was used. The six dimensions of motivation and two timepoints were used as within-subject factors, and school, grade and gender as between-subject factors across the two timepoints. Preliminary assumption testing was conducted and no serious violations noted. The results revealed a significant main effect for time F (1, 335) = 25, p < .01, Wilks’ Lambda = .93 partial = .07 suggesting that time impacted the students’ motivation. Another significant main effect was for motivation F (5, 331) = 689.70, p < .01, Wilks’ Lambda = .09, partial = .91 indicating different levels across the different motivation factors.

he title of this book is “More Common Sense.” It is a follow-up to my first publication titled, “Just Common Sense”. This book deals specifically with a variety of personnel subjects as those pertain to business and, more directly, to association management. All of the human nature characteristics we have discussed in this section can be addressed, whether it be problems or success stories, through communications. Once again, good communication is the crux of all successful activities in one form or another. But, for communications to be successful, there must be respect between a supervisor and an employee or other employees, and a genuine desire on the part of all involved to succeed. This requires great maturity. That is fundamental,

Three main theories included in chapter 4 to chapter 6 are competence beliefs, achievement values and self-determination. Authors presented those three theories and their relations with motivation. These three chapters according to children’s reasons and attitudes for whether they join in the different activities or not to analyse their motivations.

Ramburuth and Prem explain that the purpose of the study is to research the learning style preferences and approaches to students who have Asian backgrounds, and it compares to Australian students’ data. The sample is composed of seventy-eight fresh international Asian students and 110 Australian students, studying at the same university. There are three key “approaches to learning”: one is “ deep approach” (generally associated with understanding meaning and utilizing information), second is “surface approach” (often involve the memorizing of facts and reproduction of information), and third is “ achieving approach” (focusing on obtaining the highest possible grades). Asian international students demonstrate obviously higher use of deep motivation, surface and achieving strategies. They are more organized, and more focused in that study skills and managing

A study presented in the Journal on Educational Psychology by Griffith, McLaughlin, Nyman, Donica and

Over the course of this semester, I have had the opportunity to learn about educational psychology. I have always enjoyed psychology and was especially interested in how it applied to teaching in the classroom. There were five specific concepts we discussed over the semester that especially interested me. I found that homogenous and heterogeneous grouping, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, operant conditioning, cooperative learning, and divergent versus convergent thinking are five psychological concepts that every teacher should learn about in preparation for teaching.

Becoming aware of my limited knowledge provided an interest to research other cultures to improve my intercultural communication. This learning curve has reflected my score of 6.6 for Motivation, in comparison to the average for MTGS2606 students of 4.73.

Educational Research and Review Vol. 4 (4), pp. 111-116, April 2009 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/ERR ISSN 1990-3839 © 2008 Academic Journals