Motivation and Textbooks
July 31st, 2009
Who uses textbooks? Do students actually read the text? A study out in Teaching Educational Psychology by Derryberry & Wininger looked 
at the relationship between student motivation and textbook selection and use.
The authors combine a group of measures to create a group of “internal motivation” measures, including need for cognition (enjoying effortful thinking), mastery goal orientation (focus on increasing competence), and intrinsic motivation. Similarly, a separate group of measures was combined to create a measure of “external motivation”: performance goal orientation (focus on judgments of others) and external regulation. Finally, they also had an “amotivation” scale measured level of motivation. Most previous research on motivation suggests that those with internal motivation are more likely to engage in deeper processing of materal and have higher degrees of self-regulation.
Choice of text
For one of two semester studied, the authors first allowed students to select one of two textbooks for a course. They identified one as more advanced than the other and proceeded to analyze how student motivation was related to choice. Unfortunately, they do not describe how students made the choice. We are left to believe the students walked into the bookstore, saw there were two options, and just flipped through them to choose one. Was there a description given in class? How was that worded? Could other factors like price have played a factor in choice? I would need to know this before I can judge the results.
Use of textbook
Students were then asked whether they did the recommended readings for the course. Students who did or did not do the readings did not differ on their mean scores for external motivation or amotivation. The results for internal motivation were mixed. In the semester where students did not have a choice of books, those who did NOT read had slightly higher internal motivation scores than those who did. In the semester in which students did have a choice, those who DID read had higher internal motivation scores. This is certainly suggestive that there is an interaction between choice, motivation, and reading.
Finally, students were asked which described their approach to reading: skimming, reading, or reading with highlighting and notes. When there was a choice of books, students who read with highlighting and notes had higher internal motivation scores than students in the other groups. When there was no choice, there was no difference in approaches. Similarly, when there was a book choice, the students who read with highlighting and notes had lower external motivation scores.
There is an interesting question here. Are internal and external motivation influenced by having choice or is motivation something the individual brings to the situation that is rather unchangeable? Does giving students choice encourage internal motivation, which encourages deeper processing of content? Or do internally motivated students prefer choice and “reward” giving that choice with more reading and deeper processing of material? What is cause and effect here? The authors looked at mean motivation score differences between the usage groups. Another way to look at the data would be to see if usage group membership predicted motivation score. This way, you could also look at whether choice predicts motivation score.
Derryberry, W. P., & Wininger, S. R. (2008). Relationships among textbook usage and cognitive-motivational constructs Teaching Educational Psychology, 3 (2), 1-11
Tags: motivation, reading, textbooks
Posted in Curriculum and Materials, Students | Comments (0)
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
- Games and Simulation in Science
- Simulations and Labs: Either/or?
- Open Source, E-Textbooks, Traditional Texts… oh my!
- Predicting eLearning Dropout
- Development of Help-Seeking
Categories
- Assessment (3)
- Curriculum and Materials (5)
- Policy/ Government (2)
- Publication (1)
- Research Methods (4)
- Schools (1)
- Students (13)
- Teachers (8)
- Technology (8)
- Uncategorized (3)
