The main purpose of a dig is to encourage students to dig beneath the surface of the readings and other learning materials such as audiobooks. Towards this end digs are formatted like a discussion. Over a 10 day period you’ll need to submit at least one comment and at least one question based on the learning materials for the upcoming session 2 on self-determination.
One implication of this format is that as the discussion evolves you'll need to make sure to read the previously posted discussion points to see if your question needs to be changed. You’ll also need to keep checking the discussion even if you have already posted a comment and a question: I expect everyone to be up-to-date on the discussion issues when you come to class.
Remember you'll be posting at least one question and one comment (or at least two posts for each person). You can post anytime between August 24 through to midnight of September 3.
48 comments:
In listening to the audiobook I was struck by the concept illusion of choice… I used to implement this technique with students and now with my own children. Rather than saying, “no” or telling someone what to do, I like the idea of giving the person some ownership. By letting them choose one option, I always felt I was giving choice and including them in the decision, activity, assignment, etc. I guess in reality I was allowing for slight flexibility in my own predestined concept.
Hi Amy. Based on the reading “Why do high school students….” ,I would assume that your illusion worked better on your children than on your students. Going off on the same tangent, I wonder whether parents or significant others who bears the most influence on students according to the ECT are able to create a similar illusionary value support for education. If not, it is hard for me to see how amotivation could be addressed within a reasonable time limit that does not require the span of a generation. I would also be interested (and maybe the further readings will address this question as to whether giving parents illusionary choices by school districts, PTA’s or by specific teachers would impact education value perception of the parents.
When listening to the part about control and choice in the audiobook I was interested in the concept of how to make meaningful choices. It was mentioned that there should always be some awareness of the other alternatives that have not been selected. I understand that we may be capable of practicing this but should it be expected of younger students? For example, when giving my students choices for projects or assignments, should I be prompting them to ask themselves why they made the particular choice they did and not the others?
Jozsef: I may be misreading what you wrote, but you may be taking the word "illusory" too literally. The bigger point is not the "illusion," but rather that giving limited choice options tend to be more effective than having no choices.
"Illusion of choice" is contrasted against people having complete freedom of choice. But even in everyday life this is rarely the case. When people "choose" where to go on vacation, for most it's not an unlimited number of choices (if they want to remain financially solvent). In real life we tend to limit our options to practical ones pretty quickly. The idea of illusion of choice is that by providing others with a small, limited, but real set of choices they'll tend to be more motivated.
Such choices may not help amotivated learners a lot, but not all learners are amotivated. So such choices may still serve a very important role in the learning process.
This November we’ll have an “illusion of choice” if you will between two candidates (and a few fringe ones). But most people would opt for having some say about a limited number of choices relative to having no choice at all. And most students, most of the time, feel they have no meaningful choices to make.
But I would still argue (from both the readings and your discussions and my own personal expertise with adolescents) that some choice is better than no choice - even if it an "un-fun" choice. The students still seem more motivated with having some degree of autonomy or control over their surroundings.
Another idea that I have been pondering over is how these readings really make me evaluate my own teaching practices - I would like to think that I allow my students some freedom with choice - choice of seat (sometimes), choice of assignment or task, choice of what night they want to complete their assignment on (hopefully exercising some small amount of self-regulation), but it seems that the more autonomy that they have the more motivated that they are to learn. It is just so hard to let go of the control, even with knowing that retention and transfer and motivation will increase when these ideas are applied.
Amy: Sounds like it probably worked well. As your children become teens you'll probably need to give them more choices! But giving age-appropriate choices, and a decent selection of choices, certainly seems to help.
Navdeep: The idea of “meaningful” choices is an important distinction as it does imply awareness of other alternatives. It also may be the case, however, that choice is a bigger impact variable with older students than younger. I can fully believe it’s a bigger issue with teens than with second graders.
But let’s explore choice with younger students given your example. Let’s pretend for the moment that when you give choices about projects that they are all about the same complexity, length of time, etc. Otherwise their choices may be made solely based on perceived easiness! Working under that assumption, there may be a variety of things you can do.
Asking why an individual made a choice in some situations may be pretty natural and easy to do. But doing this with many students in a classroom may not be practical or natural. However, there are likely other alternatives, probably which you do already.
For example, if they have 3 choices of projects it’s worthwhile taking time in class to present each of the 3 projects to students, pointing out the value, excitement, and whatever else is relevant regarding each project choice. In this case do you “know” they made a meaningful choice? No. But you’ve raised the probability since you took the time to help them be more fully aware about all the relevant factors they might want to consider when choosing (or rejecting) a particular project option. In this case you the teacher have taken the time to make reasonably sure that the students are aware of all of the alternatives. In turn this should help them make more meaningful choices.
Thank you for the feedback Dr. Mitchell. It would be more efficient to discuss the projects and relevant factors to the entire class so that they can make meaningful choices.
Hi Kimi, I agree that as a teacher it is very "hard to let go." I think it also depends on the type of students you teach. With some you may be able to give them more choices more often, but with others I feel they may need more structure and discipline.
Dr. Mitchell: My focus on illusionary choices was driven by the SDT audio on which you said that research found that giving choices , even limited ones are delivering positive results. From here, I wanted to explore whether giving similar limited choices to parents would also improve parental perception of educational values. Values that are the most important indicators of future student motivation and academic success according to the Legault article.
Initially I thought that intrinsic motivation is the motivation to have, but after finishing the learning materials with regard to SDT, how much of extrinsic motivation is the driving force behind intrinsic motivation? Reeve and Jang found that an intention motivates a particular type of behavior. Moreover, an intrinsically established intention leads to a higher level of intrinsic motivation and autonomy. Despite the obvious contrast that when intentions begin from external sources the levels of motivation are decreased, most situations (not just students at school but also any chosen career) require some level of extrinsic intentions to motivate an act. For instance, if you work at an advertising agency, a new account is the extrinsically motivating factor to perform well for the client. This means that the extrinsic intention motivates the intrinsic act to prove your knowledge and ability and to succeed when working on the account; the extrinsic drives the intrinsic. Now, if we think about school settings where work generally originates from external sources such as teachers, intentions are also initially extrinsically motivated.
Based on the following components: 1) Isn’t it pure human nature to be more self-motivated and determined to perform well when extrinsic rewards are at stake? In the case of the advertising account, if the intrinsic motivation allows you to perform well, there could be extrinsic rewards awarded such as a bonus or a company partnership. In regards to school, monetary scholarships or recognition as valedictorian are extrinsic rewards to strive for. Again, the extrinsic drives that intrinsic. 2) How much does age or experience influence the level of extrinsic and intrinsic in terms of intention, motivation, and rewards? For example, how much extrinsic over intrinsic (and vice versa) should students and advertisers receive based on their age/experience? 3) Choice is generally extrinsically provided. deCharm’s found and Reeve and Jang write that there is a need for balance between freedom and structure when choice is presented. By providing a balanced structure of opportunity for choice, students are given a sense of control within a situation that then raises their sense of autonomy and in turn transitions their actions and behaviors to be more intrinsically motivated – this could further support that the extrinsic influences the intrinsic.
Hi Navdeep. It is curious to know how meaningful choices are made and if they are made properly. For instance, the amount of thought process put into making choices is critical because you hope that your students don't just simply make a decision just on a whim. As Dr. Mitchell wrote it is necessary to present each choice to help promote thorough thought process when making meaningful choices. Including some kind of assessment to understand the students' reasoning behind making a choice could be useful.
But when given say three choices, how meaningfully can a decision be made? Can giving only a certain amount of choice be too limiting, too constrictive?
Jozsef: Thanks for the clarification! Perhaps doing the same with parents, as you suggest would help (I’d have to think a lot more about this). The problem for many schools is first getting parents sufficiently connected to the school. But basic educational values are very important signposts that influence students, and certainly parents have a large influence in this regards on their children.
As an aside, truly amotived students are the most difficult ones to help. There’s a related area of research on “learned helplessness” that’s very interesting and partially speaks to how to better help, or prevent, amotivated students.
To all: Okay, now that the discussion has started, I'm going to read everything but remain behind the scenes unless there's some very striking reason for me to contribute. I'm already enjoying reading the contributed ideas!
I am struck by the idea of reflection on choice... why did the student choose and what influenced the choice. I never considered reflection from this perspective.
I also had two questions in the articles we read:
1. At which point does autonomy support become guidance or dependent support? For instance, in the Deci et al article we see encouragement. I think there could be a fine line here and that could strain the results as we’re looking at “self” determination.
2. In the Williams et al article how do they single out self-determination as purely self? They included people in the study that did not necessarily intend on quitting smoking. I understand that they wanted to include them so they had a good control group of smokers.
Hi Amy,
On your second question. I don’t think they wanted to measure or isolate self –determination rather than test just one particular part of the SDT process model the “ autonomy support.” Specifically, whether perceived autonomy support would lead to increases in autonomous and competence motivation, which in turn will lead to greater cessation” pg.91 abstract.
I've been thinking about how giving choices to students in classrooms helps to motivate them. I've been wondering what the outcomes are on motivation when students are influenced by peers to make choices they normally would not have made.
Now that my son is in high school, and has access to a much wider range of students, he has more choices - who to interact with, how they interact, and why he doesn't interact with certain students.
Within his AP classes and the band, levels of competence, relatedness and autonomy are much higher, given how those programs are run. (The band had a 6 day music camp and a 3 day overnight in the two weeks before school started!)
So I figure, based on our readings on SDT, the potential for increased efficacy and motivation for doing well in school and life will be generally higher with these kids than with those not in a competency-based, demanding set of courses and hobby.
And, it occurs to me that my son's AP teachers might be more likely to be "origin" teachers because they are using project-based learning (PBL) strategies.
This all suits me just fine. I am pleased he has access to these experiences so he has greater opportunities for developing autonomy, control, competence, and self-reliance. After all, higher degrees of LOCausality is where we want to lead our students!
Hi Jozsef,
Your comment, "I would also be interested (and maybe the further readings will address this question) as to whether giving parents illusionary choices by school districts, PTA’s or by specific teachers would impact education value perception of the parents" is very interesting to me.
I taught in and directed several parent participation school programs over the past 20 years and parents did empower themselves to participate and contribute.
Overall, in the schools where our contribution was framed by the teacher but specified by the parent, I wonder whether these were real or illusionary choices.
When my daughter was in 5th grade, I co-designed each science lab to be hands-on, student-paced, and match the CA standards and content schedule set by the teachers. I worked with three other parents, all in a science profession, and boy did we have fun!
Our labs were successful because the students were engaged (and so were we!), distracting behaviors were very low, and STAR scores for our grade level group were higher than in previous years.
So, were we given an authentic choice? No, it was by proxy. But because of our effort and success, I now think it was a real choice. We immersed ourselves into the task and everyone came out ahead.
So my question now is, who (and how) decides whether the choice is real or illusionary?
Dionne,
Well, I finished the readings and the issue I raised was not mentioned. Thanks for reconfirming my intuition about the parental involvement and its influence on empowerment etc. I have seen similar results with immigrant families on ESL issues but it is nice to know that it happens in the mainstream as well.
As for you question, there are some interesting points made by two authors Hand (2006) and Schwartz (2000), two guys who are not big believers of everything SDT has to offer (See Roth article pg.761).
I am going to email Dr. Mitchell and ask him to post this two article, as they are the only two anti-SDT reports in a sea of almost uncontested pro-SDT readings.
But meanwhile I will send you the two PDF’s. I really liked the Schwartz article.
Kristina -
I would disagree that external motivators have a bigger influence on behavior than internal ones do. Some people have jobs that make tons of money, yet they still get up every morning to "go to work" just like the rest of us. They may or may not be any happier than the rest of us. (Dr. Mitchell - I am not complaining, just trying to make a point!) Many teachers do what they do because it makes them happy. Sure there are days that they don't want to go to work and deal with the students, but overall they are motivated to be there and it has very little to do with the money.
Dionne -
I think that I am understanding your position. I don't think that it really matters if the choice is real or illusionary. The idea just needs to be bought into. If a choice is made and it leads to a student wanting to learn more about a subject, and that student takes the initiative to learn more, then motivation has been tapped into. And does it really matter if the choice was really theirs when the end result is about creating a deeper understanding or learning?
Kimi,
I think it does matter whether the choice is real or not. If these lines are blurred one can easily go down on the slippery slope of Skinnerian behavior modification. Then, learning can be easily detached from education and coupled with conditioning.
Of course the fact that the bulk of motivational research is done outside of educational settings is not helpful to us , but I think it is important to stay true to some fundamental educational principles, one of which calls for staying away from “False Idols.”
Also, although it is likely to produce the desired results, I think as a 21st century educational researchers we should move beyond the “Little Albert “( Watson & Rayner, 1920) like frameworks of the 1920’s.
For no particular reason, I started with the reading on amotivation, in contrast to most everyone else who have been commenting on autonomy. I had to read the article twice but I will hit the other readings today.
The subject of choices, or autonomy, is not new to me, having learned it from my wife, who uses the concept in her Early Childhood environment. She also demonstrated it for me with our own children. So, Navdeep, it is used with younger children, extensively, and with good effect. I give my community college students choices
in the form of term projects and occasionally in items of class management such as topics to cover or skip, and sometimes grading issues, usually by some form of classroom assessment.
As I read Kristina's comments about how extrinsic motivation breeds intrinsic motivation, I could see that in myself. So, extrinsic motivation serves a secondary role this way.
As I read the amotivation article, I could see and hear my students in my remedial mathematics class demonstrating all 4 dimensions of amotivation, primarily "value of task". That students fail to appreciate the need for basic math has always baffled me. I have made several feeble attempts to explain the benefits, with little effect. What I found most enlightening was that teachers influence students' perceptions of "value of task" through affiliation, or, relatedness. This gives me another avenue, but I have yet to figure out how to take advantage of it. Any ideas?
Amy,
Regarding giving your children the illusion of choice-It is interesting but that notion also comes up when looking at effective strategies for working with students with behavioral concerns within the classroom (I am not implying any connection to your children, just the notion of choice). Anyway, if teachers give students a menu of choices for an activity in which all choices would be acceptable, then it is a win/win all around. For example, during a read aloud, students get a choice of 5 different texts from which the teacher will read. This notion of the illusion of choice is widely documented in the Journal of Exceptional Children and other journals supporting work with students with exceptional needs.
Amy- that anonymous post was me-Mary. Sorry about that
Many of the comments already posted are very interesting. I can tell I am really going to like this motivation class! I forgot all the teacher tricks I learned back in the day like the importance of choice. Navdeep and Amy both reminded me about the importance of providing choices. When I used to teach preschool we would give the choice of one cookie or two. Obviously we controlled the maximum cookies they could get, but choice was always important in the preschool I worked in. I need to remember to extend this to my work now (3rd grade). Typically, my teacher would give us the choice of doing odd or even problems in the math book. Each student relatively did the same amount of problems, but we felt like we were sort of in control. It was a great feeling. I need to implement choice in assignment and projects more often. In my school we try to teach making good decisions for issues of morality, but the topic of choices and decision making can be expanded into meaningful choices. This would definitely be a better teaching practice.
kimi,
I think you hit on a very important issue-teachers' need for control. I think teachers tend to be afraid of offering choice because they think too broadly about what it really can look like and fear that they will lose the control of the direction and outcome of their curriculum/lessons. The truth is, choices can be small but should be frequent. In this way they truly have little bearing on the actual curriculum. I think you mentioned many very "doable" yet simple ways to offer students choice. The point is, if students feel a frequent sense of choice, they are empowered and are generally more willing to invest in the activities in which they have no choice and perhaps little investment (lack of value placed on the task). I think giving choice is really about empowerment.
Matthew,
I respectfully disagree with your comment that choices maybe a bigger impact variable with teens than perhaps 2nd grade students. Even 2 years olds or should I say especially 2 year olds demand independence and choice. In my many years of teaching young learners, I have found that they more choice and autonomy I offer students the much greater their motivation and overall sense of engagement. When given choice, people are asked to make meaning of contextual situation. Perhaps nothing I have done in teaching has had a greater impact of student motivation and engagement than offering frequent choice and autonomy.
As example, when I teach writing to 2nd grade students, I alternate between teacher selected genres (fictional narrative, personal narrative etc) and student selected genres. Even when I select the genre I always have students choose the topic. As a result, students come to feel very empowered. They feel in control of their voice. Here's the amazing part, once I began implementing a student-centered writing curriculum, students began to choose writing during free choice. Writing as a choice has trumped Legos, free computer time... That says a lot when you are seven.
Mary
My question to all is: What are we doing at the pre-service level to address the notion of Origin teachers, and learning to provide autonomy support? Interestingly, teacher education saturates pre-service teachers with classroom and behavior management techniques (extrinsic) but doesn't seem to tackle behavior management through student engagement and motivation (intrinsic). In one of the articles (they are running together)I think it discussed a 3 year teacher training regarding autonomy support training. It seems to me that this belongs in pre-service training.
I read the "research aloud" text by Vanteenkiste, et al. for content before listening to the audio book. It gave me a couple of ideas for how to motivate my begrudging students.
I have 2 PP slides prepared for my introduction section: 1) a list of advice from last semesters students, and 2) a list of 8 student behaviors that inhibit learning from Siadat, M., Musial, P., & Sagher, Y. (2008). Keystone method: A learning paradigm in mathematics. Primus, XVIII (4). These are meant to provide some guidance and some motivation. Now I will follow these with an extrinsic motivator (grade = passage to Algebra = graduation = career), and an attempt at an intrinsic motivator, because that is all that is really needed. The intrinsic motivation would be the self-satisfaction of attaining educational level, or, ability to provide a comfortable lifestyle.
I may be able to tie the ideas in to my own experiences when I was a sophomore in college, which would be an attempt at "affiliation".
Hi Kimi - extrinsic motivation doesn't necessarily have to be monetary in order to make someone intrinsically motivated. What about the high achieving students? Why do students strive to pursue AP courses? Most likely because the extrinsic motivation is to (hopefully) do well on the AP exam so that they can receive college credit and in place have the option to choose different courses In this respect, these students may realize that if they push themselves to succeed academically, they will have more choices in the future. Or are there other motivating factors that drive those AP students such as environmental factors - the type of school they attend, parents, friends? These other external factors provide the encouragement to further succeed.
To touch base on what Terry wrote, could the external encouragement that the higher achieving students receive intrinsically place higher value of the tasks at hand?
Mary: Nice example with the 2nd grade students! What you write makes a lot of sense.
One of the common phenomena we see in any given September is about 1,000 freshmen living away from the parents for the first time in the USF dorms. Some seem to show a very clear ability to make responsible choices, and others behave in a way that seems to indicate this is the first time they've had the ability to make their own choices (and, those choices, for the most part aren't very good!). Perhaps one predictor of these 2 types of students is one group was given the opportunity to make meaningful choices as they grew up (through school and home) while others weren't.
Here's a link for downloading the two articles Jozsef mentioned above (you'll have to scroll up this page a bit to see the relevant Jozsef comment). Both articles were mentioned in the Roth et al. (2006) article on the first page. This is an optional interest-only download, but certainly not required.
SDT extra two articles download
Two items jump out at me since I am teaching AP chem this year.
One is that Dionne describes a PBL (project-based learning) AP class. Does this really exist? At my school there is no way I can cover even half of the AP Chemistry syllabus using PBL teaching methods. They just take too long compared to lecture, lab, and problem set.
Second is that AP courses are full of extrinsic motivators (exam score, college credit, college application enhancement) but they are filled with the most motivated students who may take the classes for the reasons I did (most interesting classes, most challenging classes, classes where I actually learned something). Do these classes demotivate students because of their extrinsic focus?
Wow - great discussion!
Yes, PBL does take longer (design, explanation, work timeframe), and in fact this is one of the main reasons many teachers do not consider PBL as an option (Keller, 2007 and Prince & Felder, 2007). There are many factors in making PBL work and, when done well, PBL can be very efficient when students learn better (course concepts and learning strategies) by engaging more deeply overall; successful PBL students learn/practice/use more regulatory skills in order to be successful.
The PBL is primarily in my son's English and Spanish courses. His math and biology include many partner tasks, which seem to be PBL-like as he describes them. Sure, there are points for everything they do. Teachers can't get away with anything that looks like subjective grading at all!
But what matters, I think, is what motivates the students - each student. Some students want to get the points to get the A to get $100 from their parents. Some get the A because they are well-regulated. Some look around for class-mate role models to see how to approach the tasks set forth by the teacher.
I think good teaching includes a variety of motivators - some intrinsic, some extrinsic, some direct discussion relative to student goals in the course content - and a variety of choices.
Yes, Kimi, I agree "that student takes the initiative to learn more" is what we are after so why not tap into it? It may force us to revise our notions of "control" so that shared responsibility for learning and instruction is a reality.
I really liked the audio-book I feel asleep twice this week listening to Matthew.
I agree with Amy. I was also intrigued by the concept "illusion of choice". I also used this technique with my children, who are now grown adults, and found it to be an effective method of reducing conflict. Although at the time I didn't realize that it was a technique that would be discussed by doctoral students, I just thought I was being a good parent.
The seniors in the nursing home benefited from having choice added to a stage in their life when most or all choices have been taken from them. From a nursing stand point this technique provides the seniors with a better quality of life.
My question is how well does illusion of choice work with adults, who are intelligent self-motivated individuals? If someone offered me a choice between grapefruit juice, tomato etc and what I really wanted was coffee, I would be angry and frustrated. Is it possible that in some populations the illusion of choice can be interrupted as manipulation?
Dr. Mitchell,
I'm so glad that you brought up the example of 1,000 college freshman entering USF this September and their ability to function based on their experience with choice. College freshman are bombarded with the idea of choices. For some students, this is their first opportunity to make choices in terms of their learning (choosing courses) and their lifestyles (adjusting to life without daily parental supervision). I'm interested to see how students' ability to make responsible choices correlates with their academic success at the end of their freshman year. What role does ownership of choice play in their ability to self-regulate? This seems like a good transition into next week's conversation about Self-Regulation.
I well remember giving my children choices as they were growing up ("Do you want to wear the red dress or the blue one? PB&J or salami?" Whether or not there is real choice or just the illusion of choice, children respond well to situations in which they perceive they have control over their environment. But in my classes at the university, I have not given my students choices. Sure, students are given case studies that may have more than one answer and may have many different ways of approaching and solving problems, but I have not given thought to giving my students a variety of cases to choose from, or a variety of questions to answer for a particular case. It seems that I have forgotten how effective choice is in not only motivation, but satisfaction in the doer. The discussion revolving around choice has given me pause to consider how to incorporate choice into my courses.
Dionne & Shannon- I have begun using a form of PBL in my courses over the past couple of years. I have the luxury of not having to cover a certain amount of material and in fact, have found that less is truly more. I cover less and less of the 'syllabus' and find that my students learn more and more. One key is determining what it is that you are trying to teach. In an AP course, there is the expectation of covering a certain amount of material so that the students can test well. In my courses, my goal is to have the students become better at critical thinking and problem solving while being given an overview of a subject. If the students learn to think better and we haven't covered a certain topic, so be it.
In response to Debrayh, the idea of choice for adults perhaps needs to be more context specific. For adults in a retirement home, choosing among the types of juices can seem pretty bleak for those of us outside the walls - but for adults no longer able to care for themselves and who may have lost the ability to control almost all aspects of their lives, having a choice among juices may give a modicum of self-respect and dignity back to the individual. However, choices for adults who have voluntarily enrolled in courses (whatever the motivations may be) could and should be quite different, such as what types of questions to answer about history or science.
About the choice between covering content and using PBL or other methods to teach more deeply.
Unfortunately, there's no way to really do this in chemistry or many other subjects. You really need to understand the fundamentals of many areas to move from level one to level two in chemistry. And if you spend time going more deeply in one area and ignore other areas, then you are at a disadvantage when you move to more advanced courses.
I read an interesting book this past summer about how this plays into reading ability and education/teaching in grades 1-12 by E. D. Hirsh. The main gist of his argument in a few words is that basic general knowledge is necessary to understanding a variety of things that people read and this baseline knowledge is overlooked in an effort to focus education too much on processing tasks instead of getting basic knowledge needed to apply those methods. (The Knowledge Deficit by E.D. Hirsch, just returned by me to the SF Public a couple weeks ago)
Regarding the Deci, et al paper:
Tables 1 and 5 uses a and b subscripts. Did I miss what these mean?
Comparing men and women: the authors make a big deal about having statistically significant correlations for both the women and men. But the men have larger correlations--does this lend credibility to the idea that autonomy is more important to men? Can we compare to determine if there is a statistically and practically significant difference between the correlations for the males and females?
Regarding the Roth article:
I assume gammas greater than one for HLM must be OK, but I need to know how to interpret and make sense of gamma.
Also, I don't like making a big deal out of p<.05, but larger than .01 when they have so many correlations going on. I know that when you run a set of t-tests together, you are not supposed to use alpha of .05, but you are supposed to divide .05 by the number of tests to get a better value for alpha to avoid making statistical errors. Should a rule like this be applied in this paper/situation?
Like Shannon, I am a bit confused by the male and female autonomy. Both correlations for men and women were found to be statistically significant. I guess I am confused about the idea behind men being more autonomous (if that's the word to use). I guess what I'm asking is that does that mean that men generally like the be alone more and seek friends less to lean on like women do or does that mean within the male/male friendship?
Connection between Roth paper and Reeve/Jang paper:
I like how the Roth paper's note (p. 762, paragraph 1) about pressure on teachers from below via non-self-determined students is complementary to the comment in Reeve/Jang (p.216, column 2, first full paragraph, beginning "Our results leave...") about how they did not examine how student's autonomy might influence teacher behaviors. Speaking from practical experience, there is probably a strong interaction here, because I know that I teach differently to students who demonstrate that they are self-motivated than for students who are amotivated or who are only externally motivated.
Hi Gina,
It's not that mean like to be alone more--it's that men identify themselves more as autonomous individuals (stronger ego boundaries, more interested in self) and women are supposed to identify themselves more in the context of relationships. The authors argue for their data not supporting this view, but supporting the SDT position that men and women are pretty much similar with respect to autonomous identification. Unfortunately, while both men and women have positive and statistically significant correlations on their autonomous variables with the other variables, the men seem to have larger correlations--which would support the other non-SDT theory.
Dionne,
I think that the person who decides whether the choice is real or illusory is the person receiving the choices. For example, does the teenager who receives a choice to either have the car home by midnight or stay home happy that they received a choice? My experience with teenagers (I have three of them) is that they would see it as controlling and not funny; which dovetails into Deberyah's comment about illusory choices can be construed as manipulate.
I thought the material on choices was excellent. I was struck at the notion that each choice in the classroom had to be equally challenging or the choice was illusory.
I don't think teenagers need to have choices laid out for them, just the space to make their own decisions.
I thought the Reeve and Jang article was fascinating. The method used role playing and was very creative. (Side note - the Ed Psych students were offered extra credit for participating. Choice or the illusion of choice? Sorry, I am intrigued by this concept)
The most powerful variables found from my reading were on the plus side encouragement (just like coaching) and the most negative was the asking of controlling questions. The experiment centered around putting a puzzle together and the questions asked were appropriate.
The question I have is what would be examples of controlling questions in higher education?
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