Emotion & Motivation Regulation

Description of Solo Task

I attended the lecture on Motivation and Emotions in Self-regulated learning?  by Hanna Järvenoja. I read the three articles and sought to understand the concept of motivation and emotions in self-regulated learning. I am willing to put in the effort because I believe its worth it. I came to a conclusion on two ideas I consider important and I used the ICE to elaborate further.

Topics in Article

 

 

Goals

Long Term: To be an expert in Self-Regulated Learning
Short Term: To understand the role of emotions and motivation in the self-regulated learning

Confidence in Achieving goals

Positive.

ICE Notes

A student's emotions

The emotional state of a student affects their ability to concentrate on the learning task. When motivation is positive, all energy is focused on the learning task. On the other hand, when students have negative emotions such as worrying about their ability to succeed will spend more time worrying than focusing on the task. Emotions affect one’s motivation to learn. In Hanna’s lecture, she gave an example of how the negative emotional state of a student nearly affected the task at hand but for her quick intervention, the root cause of the emotional state was detected and solved. This led to a positive attitude toward the task. Our emotional state before a lesson affects our ability to pay attention. In my work as a teaching assistant at a kindergarten, we were advised to engage the kids in molding activities such as (clay dough). The purpose was to get students to mold out their emotions before lessons began. I often would ask students how they were doing in the morning while helping them to change into their indoor shoes. Their responses were good (got a present from parents, traveled, brought some new toy or phone to school, falling down from bed) and bad (parent-child quarrel or correction). Some even cried. These emotional states were changed sometimes through teacher’s encouragement, students sharing similar experiences, peer sympathy, etc. A successful change of emotions motivated students to be ready for class. As teachers, we were also encouraged to be cheerful regardless of our emotional state. I must confess it was a difficult task and required a conscious effort to do so. The emotional state of a student whiles learning affects their ability to remember or recall what they studied later. It also has the tendency to affect a student’s ability to solve problems and the learning strategies a student uses.

Many factors (including gender, personal traits, environment, society, and appraisal) affects the emotional state of a student A situation in the classroom may cause a student to think and interpret the situation as a good or bad which trigger emotions and strategies to cope with the learning situation. The student’s ability to control the situation at hand has an impact on their emotional state in the classroom.

In Boekaerts’ Chapter on Emotions, emotion regulation and self-regulation, she discusses how the composition of a classroom in terms of students’ academic abilities, classroom instructions, the structure of exams, the goals of students, the expectation of teachers and parents, and feedback of assessment (frequency of assessment, the outcome of the assessment and how students interpret outcomes in terms of how its value) also affects the emotional state in the classroom. The emotional state and interaction between the factors that affect a student’s emotion changes as the students climb the academic ladder. How to regulate the emotions of students towards a positive is important because it ultimately affects the students’ academic success at each level of the academic ladder.

Coping strategies are used in regulating one’s emotions. In her article, she focused on the Gross’s process model of emotion regulation. This model has 5 strategies (situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change and response modulation) for emotion regulation. A student’s quest to modify his or her current emotional state involves asking for instructional and social support. In situation selection, students select the situations they think it’s best for their emotional need. For instance, a may take up a less difficult task to avoid failure or avoid a particular subject of possible. This may affect their long or short term goal hence it’s important for students to be aware of the implications of the decisions they make. Cognitive appraisals affect the self-efficacy and emotional state in regulating one’s emotions. The ability of a person to regulate their emotions involves the use of both cognitive and non-cognitive competencies. Obviously, one’s willingness to regulate his or her emotions is the first step in emotion regulation.

A quick response to how the emotions of student can be regulated is found in Bokerates’ article under the section “Recommendations from Practice”. They include but are not limited to providing a clear instructions for tasks demands, study materials, exam procedures, criteria for grading, giving alternative task for students to make their choice, provide guides in the form of lecture notes, web links, giving room for exam retake, letting students know the importance of a task for their career will help them to place value on learning activities, and scaffolding the process of emotion regulations are strategies that a teacher can employ to help students regulate their emotions in the classroom.

Strategies for regulating motivation 

The strategies stated below meant for learners to regulate their motivation. I believe learners are using these strategies because I have used some of these strategies without knowledge of them. At the onset of a learning task, learners need to find their source of motivation (rewards, goal orientation, interest, etc.) Monitoring and regulating one's motivation is important because the motivational levels may drop or increase whiles performing the task. The situation in which a learner finds him or herself determines their level of motivation. The perceived difficulty of the task, as well as its demands, may change so regulating of one's motivation is important.  

1. Self-consequating: These strategies involves a learner using a reward or punishment in order to motivate themselves to complete a task on time.
2. Goal orientation: the desire to be the best, achieve high scores, or be a master and an expert affects the effort a learner is willing to put in. Being a master or the best is a source of motivation for learners to keep going. 
3. Interest enhancement: Having an interest in something motivates one to put in an effort. In some situations, students use strategies to make the task more interesting, engaging or challenging as a source of motivation.
4. Environmental Structuring: A conducive environment is essential for task completion. Strategies used by students include changing location, listening to music, taking short breaks. The purpose is to enable them to focus their attention on the task and get rid of distractions that hinder their motivation. 
5. Self-handicapping strategies relate to putting in a little effort, procrastinating tasks. When students engage in such strategies they often attribute their performance to something or someone other than themselves. In the context of motivating students, it helps them to avoid or withdraw from the task and also it may allow them to focus on the task itself instead of the grades. Either way, they are not responsible for their performance.
6. Attribution Control: The causal attributions students make in self-handicapping situations can be to increase their motivation. Attributions of this nature are related to feedback from the teacher. Students find reasons for their inability to do something based on a feedback from the teacher. 
7. Efficacy management: A learner may attempt to manage their perceived abilities and inabilities. Efficacy management involves the use of this strategy involves 3 sub-strategies. Proximal goal setting (setting short term and long term goals to make tasks more manageable), defensive pessimism (a student’s awareness of their inability or lack of readiness may motivate them to work hard to avoid failure), and self-efficacy talks (affirming oneself of the ability to do something.
8. Emotion regulation: Student may use coping strategies (situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change and response modulation) to regulate their emotions while studying. The learner decides to approach or avoid the emotion. When the learner decides to approach the emotion, they focus their attention on how they can modify the situation to reduce emotional impact (eg. worrying, thought suppression). It then becomes necessary for the learner to appraise the situation to change their cognition. Response modulation accounts for the physical and behavioral control of students reaction and response by exercising, sleeping, etc. When students successfully regulate their emotions, all attention and interest will be focused on the task.

What can teachers do to help students monitor and regulate themselves?

1. Self-consequating: Teachers can organize tasks for students that includes a reward system for when work is completed within the set time frame. The teacher can also encourage students to use self-rewards to increase motivation when a task is challenging task.

2. Goal orientation: Teachers can enhance students mastery goal orientation by assigning a challenging task that enhances a students' abilities. Keep reminding students of the goal at hand when you identify something that can cause students to lose motivation.

3. Interest enhancement: Encourage students to think and discuss with their colleagues their source of motivation. This will stimulate the interest of students.

4. Environmental structuring: Teachers can give students the opportunity to choose where they want to work if possible and the people they want to work with. Encourage students to access their environment and create a conducive environment that will enable them to complete their work on time.

5. Self-handicapping: Teachers should encourage students to have a mastery goal orientation instead of performance orientation, this way student motivated to work hard to be an expert instead of focusing on grades which will cause them to find excuses for their failure

6. Attribution control: When assessing students, teachers can focus on the effort of the student instead of task conditions. Also,  when teachers are giving feedback, attributions for success and failure can be connected to the strengths and weaknesses of the student. That way students will have a good reason to improve upon their weaknesses

7. Self-efficacy management: Teachers can provide opportunities for students to achieve their goals (setting proximal goals). Goal achievement increases not only the motivation of students but also their self-efficacy. Also, teachers can set goals for specific tasks that will enhance the self-efficacy of students.

8. Emotion regulation: Teachers can teach students how to know their emotions and the ways in which they can regulate them. 

Reflections

I have seen myself in many stages of emotional regulation in my past studies. I believe my current studies will be the best because I am aware and responsible for my learning styles, strategies, and regulating my learning than more than ever. I remember my goals and interest was my source of motivation. Now I see the environment (University of Oulu spaces for studying and eating) as a source of motivation because I can get almost everything I need while studying (environmental structuring). I did not encounter any challenge because I understand the basic idea behind self-regulation. All most all the terms and concepts are familiar from the previous articles I have read 😊. I am made one more step towards (👉👉👉) Expertise.