Achievement

Adolescents are motivated to achieve in two different ways.  Intrinsic motivation refers to an internal will to exert effort into something.  Extrinsic motivation requires an outside source of motivation to be used on someone.  Because adolescents are more likely to succeed long term through intrinsic motivation, teachers should use extrinsic motivators sparingly (Weinstein, Deci, & Ryan, 2012).  Extrinsic motivators should be used at the beginning to get students over a small challenge and then removed as quickly as possible.  The overuse of extrinsic motivators reduces the chance of a student developing an intrinsic motivation on a subject.  For this reason, teachers should help students to build intrinsic motivation whenever possible.  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied optimal experiences and flow in adolescents.  His research found that teachers should aim to have students perceive a high level of challenge and a high level of their own skill for the best class flow (Strati, Shernhoff, & Kackar, 2012).

Student achievement should be something of which all teachers strive, but they also need to manage their classrooms in ways that promote achievement through intrinsic motivation and not through extrinsic motivation.  One way that I plan to increase students' intrinsic motivation is by allowing students to set their own goals and timeline on a real world project of their choice.  I will ask students to do a statistical study on a population on whatever topic they have an interest.  The only limit is that the data needs to be representable numerically (e.g. a student cannot study favorite colors between boys and girls in the freshmen class, but they could research the age that different students learned that Santa does not exist).  This will allow students to study something in which they have a passion and hopefully allow them to grow their interest in the topic and learn more about it from a new angle (5.2).  Also, by allowing students to be in charge of their own projects, they will be able to monitor their own progress and evaluate where they are going.  I will ask that students compare themselves to their populations by using z-squared tests and by comparing themselves in the quartile ranges.  Students will have to turn in their findings in a formal write up that includes any graphs and equations used in their analysis.