Correlation Between Motivation And Achievement

Motivation is important because it allows you to work towards and complete your goals. GPA allows you to see, on average, how well a student has performed in all classes they have taken. It is likely there is a relationship between motivation and GPA. If a student is highly motivated, will their GPA rise? Based upon previous research, it is hypothesized that students who are highly motivated will have a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Seventeen university students, 9 male and 8 female participated in the survey. The survey included 9 questions that measured motivation, measured on a Likert scale from 1-5. [Results].

The United States of America is known for being a country filled with people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Likewise, the student population in schools is just as diverse as it continues to grow. Lynch (2015) notes that schools are expected to teach their students “how to synthesize cultural differences into their knowledge base” as this will help “facilitate students’ personal and professional success in a diverse world” (para. 8). Educators must be able to provide for the diverse needs of students and are expected to equip students with skills that can lead to healthy development as it can affect higher levels of student achievement and students have more opportunities of success in their future. Providing students with tools and skills requires an awareness and acceptance of their ethnic identity. Once students have developed self-acceptance about their ethnic identity, they can begin to feel empowered and motivated to do well. Through cultural empowerment, students of color can develop intrinsic motivation and achieve academic success.

Children encounter messages about mathematic beginning very early in life. Their parents may say, “Oh, it’s okay. I wasn’t any good at math either,” or their siblings may say, “I loved multiplication! It’s so easy.” Because of this, by the time students are in upper elementary grades, they develop attitudes toward math including whether they enjoy it and how capable they believe they are in the subject. The research in this study was conducted with the 13 students in TCA Arshag Dickranian Armenian School’s 4th grade math classroom over the course of 5 weeks. From the beginning of the school year, the 4th graders in the classroom lacked motivation and enthusiasm for mathematics. It was apparent that students did not feel confident in mathematics and this was a contributor to the decline in their intrinsic math motivation. The most immediate answer to the problem was to teach students test-taking strategies that would allow them to be more confident in their test-taking while also raising their scores to motivate them at the same time. This brought about the question for the action research: What test-taking strategies will improve TCA Arshag Dickranian Armenian School’s 4th grade math test scores to a baseline average of 80 percent to promote their intrinsic

Accurately predicting academic persistence for incoming and returning college students is constant problem for all involved. Multiple predictors currently exist to help determine the academic motivation of students. Traditional predictors cover the cognitive aspects of students. The most common predictors are standardized tests and high school GPA. Noncognitive predictors are difficult to accurately measure but still contribute to a student’s persistence. Cultural predictors such as economic status, moral support and ethnic differences also play a role in a student’s academic motivation. The purpose of this paper was to explain the effectiveness of these predictors.

The article “Achievement Goals as a Measure of Motivation in University Students” talked about the difference in performance goals and mastery goals in students currently enrolled in universities. The article described a performance goal is one that is associated to a specific outcome; For example, passing your first chemistry exam. Performance goals are more common with short term goals solely because the majority of the time they aren’t something you can do continuously. On the other hand, a mastery goal is described as one that you set in order to show you your comprehension of a certain topic or task; for instance, instead of passing your chemistry exam, you want to fully understand chemistry and become a “master.”

Merriam-Webster(2013) dictionary describes Intrinsic Motivation as, “Motivation to engage in a behavior arises from within the individual because it is intrinsically rewarding”(Merriam-Webster, 2013). Content vs. Process theory describes intrinsic motivation. Merriam-Webster(2013) states that Extrinsic Motivation is motivation that comes from an external source(Webster, 2013). Natural vs. Rational Theory describes extrinsic motivation because a person is looking for an outside reward such as a trophy, or an increased salary.

Motivation is central to creativity, productivity and happiness. Motivation is what causes a person to react the way they do to a situation. It is what drives a person to get more of what they want and feel passionate about in their lives. It gives that person a sense of happiness and creates purpose.

In reviewing the Nine Central Topics of Educational Psychology, the topic under review is - Motivation. “Why do students engage or not engage in certain activities/tasks? How can teachers use student interest to facilitate learning? How can students self -regulate their learning and behavior?” (Edmunds & Edmunds, 2010, p.11)

The area of interest I have chosen to explore is the connection between the inclusion of a real world curriculum and student motivation levels in the mathematics classroom. Lack of student motivation is a common problem I experience as a high school mathematics teacher, hence this is an area in which I have great interest. In my experience, students with low motivation levels often have low academic achievement, poor high stakes testing scores, and lack of conceptual understanding. I have chosen to further explore this area of interest because I have found that when I include a real world curriculum in the mathematics classroom, I see increased student motivation levels. Through

Behaviorism in the context of the learning environment may yield the transfer of knowledge but does so in a way reliant on the promise of external rewards (Schunk, 2012). While the use of extrinsic motivation and reward systems are widespread in learning environments to help maintain engagement and appropriate behaviors, it is also of high importance to foster and maintain intrinsic motivation in students so the reward is the learning experience and growth itself (Martinez, 2010; Schunk, 2012). The positivist climate in schools may make it difficult to cultivate intrinsically motivated students as test scores, peer comparisons, teacher praise, and promotion are all extrinsic

Success in the learning process can be caused by factors from within individuals and from outside the individual.Factors from within individuals include physical and psychic, examples of psychological factors such as motivation. High student motivation can support the success of learning, will low student learning motivation is a barrier that can result in low learning outcomes. For that teachers should be able to choose the right model or method in order to create an attractive learning situation so that it can establish the motivation to learn and achievement of students in learning is achieved.

Studies have indicated that intrinsic motivation increases student achievement. The success of integrating technology with increased student achievement could vary based on students’ intrinsic motivational styles. ATLAS has identified viable motivational styles within individual learning styles. Understanding different technologies and their effect on motivational styles in ATLAS has not been studied, but studies validate the importance and the need for this study.

students with different academic abilities and levels. By doing so, we can infer if high school students become more motivated to learn by using different teaching strategies.

Considering the desire of every nation to industrialize in this 21st century achievement motivation becomes a critical variable. In a bid to achieve this feat, it is therefore necessary to examine through this research work if there exist a relationship between achievement motivation and industrial development.

Of all the personal and psychological variables that have attracted researchers in this area of educational achievement, motivation seems to be gaining more popularity and leading other variables (Tella, 2003). All the above stated reasons, for persistent failure in mathematics, which have been proffered, bear relevant in one way or the other to the poor performance of pupils in mathematics. This has lead to a cycle of events that could be illustrated thus: When explaining the illustration above (Aremu, 1998) explained that; when pupils express lack of interest in the subject, it affects the way they react or listen to the teacher. And when many of the pupils believe that they cannot pass, the teacher is also affected. This is because aside of this negative response from the pupils, he/she as well is already being confronted by a lot of other factors (e.g., low income, low status in society, large teacher-pupils ratio) and so on. These may cause him or her to resorts to the easiest way of disseminating knowledge that is ‘chalk and talk’ without the use of instructional materials. He may not also bother to vary his teaching styles to suit individuals; therefore the cycle goes on (Aremu 1998). One unfortunate outcome of this is that,