Influence of Motivation on Learning

Topic: Education Perception
Words: 879 Pages: 3

Introduction

The success of educational activity depends on many factors of psychological and pedagogical order, which are concretized mainly as socio-psychological and socio-pedagogical. The strength of motivation and structure is an obvious influence on educational activities’ success. As a leading factor in regulating personality activity, its behavior and activities, motivation is of exceptional interest to psychologists, teachers and parents. It is impossible to establish effective pedagogical interaction with a child, teenager, or youth without considering the peculiarities of their motivation. Behind the objectively identical behavior of schoolchildren, a variety of reasons can lurk. In other words, the incentive sources of the same act, its motivation, can be completely different.

The Problem of Motivation in the Educational Process

Today, in psychology, the problem of forming the stimulating area of the personality of a modern student is becoming especially relevant. Modern society makes increasingly high demands on the future specialist: the ability to solve non-standard problems and find alternative solutions, to comprehend the consequences of their activities for themselves and others (Meşe & Sevilen, 2020). It can be facilitated by a high level of motivation for learning activities. Motivation is the main driving force in human behavior and training and in forming a future professional.

At the same time, the lack of internal motivation for learning, even accompanied by high indicators of the student’s development level, will not ensure a success. Therefore, the study of the problem of the influence of motivation for the success of educational activities on the development of the cognitive sphere is relevant today. Its solution is essential concerning students who have an imbalance of motivational support and student opportunities, which causes low results in educational activities (Kulikowski et al., 2021). Therefore, the motives for students’ academic and professional actions become especially important. Learning motivation is a particular type of motivation included in learning activities, and is characterized by stability, dynamism, and direction.

The success of educational activities depends on many factors of a psychological and pedagogical nature. The motivational component is the psychological basis of learning (Meşe & Sevilen, 2020). If a person does not have this, then the development of their cognitive sector will not be able to lead them to school success. The insufficient development of mental processes and the motivational area often act as one of the leading factors hindering the assimilation of the educational program and its practical part. In addition, it affects the formation of personality, which underlies a student’s failure.

Cognitive processes unfolding during the educational activity are almost always accompanied by positive and negative emotional experiences, which act as significant determinants that affect one’s success. That is explained by the fact that emotional states and feelings can exert a regulating and energizing influence on the processes of perception, memory, thinking, imagination, and personal manifestations, including interests and motivation.

The Relationship between Emotional State and Motivation

Different forms of human behavior aim to satisfy various needs that underlie the maintenance of individual homeostasis. Features of the internal state, primarily motivation and emotions, give the behavior a purposeful character. The formation of reasons is determined by the active form of the nervous structures (Kulikowski et al., 2021). The corresponding nervous signaling is addressed to special parts of the brain, primarily to the nuclei of the hypothalamus (The limbic system, 2019). From here, motivational excitation spreads to the limbic system and the cerebral cortex, where a human behavior program is formed to satisfy the initial need (The limbic system, 2019). At the same time, motivation activates the traces of those external circumstances stored in the memory, where it is possible to fulfil the demand and thus improve the emotional state.

Qualitative motivation creates all the conditions for accomplishing the single final goal of education, developing creative activity, and satisfying biological and spiritual needs. When forming the motives of educational activity, assessing the probability of achieving the set goals is paramount. If extraordinary efforts are not needed to acquire a good, or, on the contrary, this good is complicated to extract, then the motive for labor is usually not formed. The student’s activity, and, consequently, the effectiveness of a work, largely depends on the prospects of motivation. The right combination of perspective and current motivation is important. In this context, motivation influences a person to inspire one to specific actions by stimulating certain motives.

It should be noted that the emotional component is included in the educational activity not as an accompanying one but as a significant element that affects both the results of educational activities and the formation of a person. Therefore, the correct correlation between emotional and cognitive processes in learning is significant. Underestimation of emotional components leads to many difficulties and errors in the organization of the learning process.

Conclusion

Emotions are motives that stimulate human behavior and determine some critical aspects of the activity in which a person is engaged. Motivation is one of the most complex and, at the same time, important factors in life. It largely defines purposefulness and successes, defeats and everything that follows from them. Thus, the student’s motivation differs from the general emotional state on which one’s possible successes or failures in studies depend. It is important not to exclude the factors influencing students’ progress and consider it when solving the problem of underachievement.

References

Kulikowski, K., Przytuła, S., & Sułkowski, Ł. (2021). E‐learning? Never again! On the unintended consequences of COVID‐19 forced e‐learning on academic teacher motivational job characteristics. Higher Education Quarterly, 76(1), 174–189. Web.

The limbic system. Queensland Brain Institute. (2019). Web.

Meşe, E., & Sevilen, Ç. (2020). Factors influencing EFL students’ motivation in online learning: A qualitative case study. Journal of Educational Technology & Online Learning, 4(1), 11–22. Web.