Discuss teaching and training issues.

Copyright Alite

Home > Readings > Personality and Differential Motivation in the Classroom

Motivation

Personality and Differential Motivation in the Classroom – an extract

William Perez and Hunter Gehlbach

Stanford University

Competitive classroom structures are generally thought to be less healthy and less productive learning environments than cooperative classrooms. Because of the wide range of personalities in schools, we imagine that students will be motivated to learn in a classroom structure depending on the personality traits they bring into the classroom. More specifically, it was hypothesized that extroverts would rate competitive classroom environments more highly than introverts. In cooperative classroom environments, the authors were split. One author felt that introverts would rate cooperative classrooms more favorably than extroverts; the other predicted that there would be no difference between the two groups. It was also hypothesized that overall, students would prefer the cooperative learning situation. To test these hypotheses, thirty-nine college students were surveyed. Results indicated a significant preference for cooperative learning confirming findings from previous studies. Our other hypotheses were not confirmed. Our qualitative data suggests that other factors such as the role of choice, teaching method, materials, and teacher likeability may be more important factors for interacting with cooperative and competitive classroom environments.

Because issues in education are muddled with multiple variables, it is easy for people to think in generalizations and set up dichotomies around certain issues. One issue that is commonly debated through examining polarities is the merits of a cooperative versus a competitive environment in the classroom. Many educators and educational researchers feel that cooperation leads to unequivocally
superior student outcomes academically and socially. This belief persists in spite of the fact that there is no such thing as a purely cooperative or completely competitive classroom; these constructs are aligned along a continuum.

The false dualism that pits cooperative atmospheres against competitive classroom environments is the focus of this research. We intend to see if there is an interaction between the personality traits of individual students and the learning environment that best suits them. Before clarifying our hypothesis, we first summarize relevant literature on motivational orientations. Next, we will clarify our definitions of cooperation and competition in classrooms and address relevant research in the field of personality. After describing the methods and results of our pilot study, we conclude by making recommendations on how to best address issues of motivation elicited by different classroom structures so that we can better foster life-long learning habits in students.

Motivational Orientations:

The literature on motivation that is relevant to schooling describes students as being oriented towards both a need for success and a need to avoid failure. Depending upon the authors, this continuum is also represented as having a high vs. low need for achievement, having high or low test anxiety, or having a mastery vs. ego orientation to learning (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). One principle that underlies these conceptions is that some people will focus more on challenging themselves to achieve by choosing moderately difficult tasks, persisting in the face of setbacks, etc. while others try to avoid situations of moderately difficult tasks where their self-esteem would be at risk (Atkinson & Feather, 1974). Those who are risk averse tend to choose either very simple tasks or very hard ones. In the former case they are confident they will succeed, and in the latter case nobody will expect them to succeed. Dweck and Leggett (1988) extended this general rule. They state that people have different personal theories of intelligence. Some believe that intelligence is a stable, fixed trait (entity view), while others think that intelligence is malleable (incremental view). Those who entertain the entity view of intelligence usually have a performance goal orientation as opposed to a learning goal orientation. These are the students who are more focused on making sure that they do not appear foolish to others in the class. Students with more of an incremental view of intelligence will be more concerned with whether they are learning than with their social presentation to their peers. Students holding the entity view tend to avoid failure, have a low need for achievement, have high test anxiety, and develop an ego orientation to learning. The opposite associations generally were found in students with an incremental view of intelligence.

These theories have potent implications for predicting behavior patterns related to learning. Atkinson and Feather (1974) found that people who have a greater orientation towards approaching success tend to have higher levels of academic achievement. This correlation is explained in the following manner. Students whose tendency to approach success is greater than their tendency to avoid failure are more likely to engage in tasks that challenge them. Students whose tendency is to avoid failure are more likely to protect their ego by engaging in very easy or very difficult tasks. While they may be successful in protecting their ego in the short term, they engage in situations and behaviors that minimize learning since they already know the answer on easy tasks or are helplessly guessing on extremely hard tasks. This explanation dovetails with the goal setting theory put forth by Dweck and Leggett (1988). They report on an earlier study of Dweck’s where both mastery-oriented and helpless-oriented children were given a series of problems and experienced both successes and failures. They state that, “the mastery oriented children not only believed they could surmount obstacles and reach a solution, but even relished the opportunity to do so.” (Dweck & Leggett, 1988 p. 258). Thus, those students with a learning/mastery orientation or a greater tendency to approach success are more likely to put themselves in situations that will enhance their future learning.

The second important implication of these theories on motivational orientations involves how these dispositions can shape learning habits for extended periods of time. There is a burgeoning literature that describes one of the central goals for schools as the creation of life-long learners. Educational philosophers such as Francis Schrag underscore the importance of this mission. In Back to Basics he lists only three educational aspirations for the future that everyone should agree upon. His second and third are that students in the future, “Should be disposed to continue their own learning,” and that, “To the extent possible, they should have developed the capacity to continue that learning” (1995, p. 10). The normal pattern for students high in tendency to approach success is, after succeeding on a task, to select a task slightly more challenging than the previous one. The increasing challenges maintain their interest and their learning continues (Renninger, Hidi, & Krapp, 1992). If these students fail on a task, they usually reduce the difficulty of their next task slightly and soon recapture their positive cycle. On the other hand, those students with the tendency to avoid failure who are selecting inappropriately easy or difficult tasks set themselves up in a lose-lose situation. Repeated successes on easy tasks diminish interest in learning and schooling. Repeated failures of difficult tasks contribute to the creation of a helplessness orientation. In either case, the students with a performance orientation decrease the likelihood of becoming life-long learners.

In sum, whether students develop the habit of being motivated to approach appropriately challenging tasks has tremendous ramifications for their future academic achievement and their development of life-long learning habits. One major influence on whether students develop this motivational pattern is their affect towards their classroom environment. This affect is dictated in part by whether the classroom is more competitive than cooperative or visa-versa. The literature on motivation that is relevant to schooling describes students as being oriented towards both a need for success and a need to avoid failure. Depending upon the authors, this continuum is also represented as having a high vs. low need for achievement, having high or low test anxiety, or having a mastery vs. ego orientation to learning (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). One principle that underlies these conceptions is that some people will focus more on challenging themselves to achieve by choosing moderately difficult tasks, persisting in the face of setbacks, etc. while others try to avoid situations of moderately difficult tasks where their self-esteem would be at risk (Atkinson & Feather, 1974). Those who are risk averse tend to choose either very simple tasks or very hard ones. In the former case they are confident they will succeed, and in the latter case nobody will expect them to succeed. Dweck and Leggett (1988) extended this general rule. They state that people have different personal theories of intelligence. Some believe that intelligence is a stable, fixed trait (entity view), while others think that intelligence is malleable (incremental view). Those who entertain the entity view of intelligence usually have a performance goal orientation as opposed to a learning goal orientation. These are the students who are more focused on making sure that they do not appear foolish to others in the class. Students with more of an incremental view of intelligence will be more concerned with whether they are learning than with their social presentation to their peers. Students holding the entity view tend to avoid failure, have a low need for achievement, have high test anxiety, and develop an ego orientation to learning. The opposite associations generally were found in students with an incremental view of intelligence.

This explanation dovetails with the goal setting theory put forth by Dweck and Leggett (1988). They report on an earlier study of Dweck’s where both mastery-oriented and helpless-oriented children were given a series of problems and experienced both successes and failures. They state that, “the mastery oriented children not only believed they could surmount obstacles and reach a solution, but even relished the opportunity to do so.” (Dweck & Leggett, 1988 p. 258). Thus, those students with a learning/mastery orientation or a greater tendency to approach success are more likely to put themselves in situations that will enhance their future learning.

Next we need to understand that there are many varieties of competition and cooperation in the classroom. As mentioned in the introduction, these ideas are often thought of as opposing one another in a false dichotomy i.e. classrooms are often thought to have either a competitive or cooperative atmosphere. They are rarely thought of as a mixture of the two.

Most of the research in this area of classroom structure delineates three options for how teachers organize the orientation of their classrooms: cooperative, competitive, or individualistic. Cooperative classes are defined as those where improved personal performance is dependent upon improved performance of others. In competitive classes, improved personal performance is dependent upon and causes worse performance for classmates i.e. it is a zero-sum game. In individualistic structures personal performance is independent of the performance of others (Johnson & Johnson, 1975).

In practice pure forms of these structures do not exist. Though some law schools and business schools still ‘grade on the curve’, and there are many ‘weeder’ courses in medical schools, there are few instances where classes are purely competitive i.e. 20% get As, 20% get Bs…and 20% fail. Conversely, few teachers assign group projects in which high performance of members in other groups helps your personal achievement. Although purely independent work does exist, it is rare that there is no peer interaction in a class. As a result our study uses these constructs only as guide-posts. As will be seen in the methods section, we describe actual classroom scenarios rather than attempting to pinpoint a precise definition of a particular classroom structure. For the purposes of our study, cooperative classroom settings are defined as those where students interact with each other frequently in an attempt to help one another learn while the teacher helps facilitate these interactions. Grading in these classrooms is criterion-based as opposed to normative. A competitive classroom features fewer interactions between students, more individualized work, little encouragement to help classmates, and evaluation that in some way depends upon the performance of the other members of the class.

Personality and Learning Structures

Research by Graziano et al. (1985) and Wolfe and Kasmer (1988) using hypothetical athletic competition scenarios suggests that extroverts and introverts react differently to cooperative and competitive situations. Most notably, the results indicate that extroverts regard a competitive situation more favorably than do introverts, whereas introverts regard a cooperative situation more favorably than do extroverts. These findings indicate that educators need to be aware of these temperament factors in order to address individual educational needs of students. If the educational setting is
incompatible with the students’ personal orientations towards learning, they may be unable to engage in educational activities and will be left at a disadvantage. More importantly, students may disengage from the learning process which can further hamper their educational success.

Further findings on the relationship between personality and learning
orientation show that extroverts judge competitive situations to be
significantly more arousing, potentially rewarding, interesting, and likeable than introverts. In addition, introverts regard the competitive situation as more potentially punishing than do extraverts (Graziano et al., 1985, Wolfe & Kasmer, 1988). Wolfe and Kasmer (1988) make even more specific distinctions as to what other specific personality traits explain preference for either a cooperative or competitive situation. Within the Extrovert factor, they identified sociability and impulsivity subfactors that further pinpoint the interaction mechanisms of personality and learning environment. They found that Sociability subfactor strongly determines subject’s ratings of the cooperative activity and that the Impulsivity subfactor can strongly predict subject’s ratings of the competitive activity. These findings support the idea that individuals with a social orientation prefer the personal interactions in a cooperative learning environment. Impulsive persons do not find the harmonious interactions of cooperative learning appealing and thus do not perceive a cooperative situation in the same favorable light as do sociable people.

Another study by Borg and Shapiro (1996) found evidence that personality type does affect a student’s ability to succeed in college level introductory economics courses. They suggest that matching student’s learning style with a professor’s teaching style improves student’s performance in economics. According to the authors, students develop different learning styles based on their personality. They cite research by Wetzel et al. (1982) and Charkins et al. (1985)that identify three learning styles based on personality types:
Dependent Learners typified by an SJ temperament on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Independent Learners characterized by an NT temperament and Collaborative learners characterized by NF and SP temperaments. They determined that students with a SJ personality type, according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, prefer “chalk-and-talk lecture format,” individual learning whereas NF students prefer activities in which they can be personally involved, i.e. cooperative learning. In sum, previous research illustrates that different personalities are likely to thrive in different learning environments.

Summary

All indications from the research are that we want students to develop mastery orientations towards learning. Classroom structures that are competitive are generally thought to be less healthy and less productive learning environments as compared to cooperative classrooms. Because of the wide range of personality traits that students bring into the schools, we posit that certain classroom structures are neither unilaterally good nor evil but rather that students will be more or less motivated by a classroom structure depending upon several factors including their personality. More specifically, we predict that extroverts will rate competitive classroom environments more highly than introverts. In cooperative classroom environments, the authors are split. One author feels that introverts will rate cooperative classrooms more favorably than extroverts; the other author predicts there will be no difference between the two groups. Our study will also attempt to confirm previous research findings that indicate that overall, students prefer cooperative learning situations.

References:

Atkinson, J. W., & Feather, N. T. (1974). A theory of achievement motivation. Huntington, N.Y.,: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co.
Borg, M. O., Shapiro, S. L. (1996). Personality Type and Student Performance in Principles of Economics. Journal of Economic Education, 27 (Winter), 3-25.
Charkins, R. J., O'Toole D. M., & Wetzel, J. L. (1985). Linking teacher and student learning styles with student achievement and attitudes. Journal of Economic Education, 16 (Spring), 111-120.
Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256-273.
Graziano, W. G., Feldesman, A. B., & Rahe, D. F. (1985). Extraversion, social cognition, and the salience of aversiveness in social encounters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 971-980.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1975). Learning together and alone : cooperation, competition, and individualization. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall.
Keirsey, D., Bates, M. (1984). Please understand me: Character & temperament types. Del Mar, CA: Gnosology Books, Ltd.
Renninger, K. A., Hidi, S., & Krapp, A. (Eds.). (1992). The role of interest in learning and development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wetzel, J. N., Potter, W. J., & O’Toole, D. M. (1982). The influence of learning styles and teaching styles on student attitudes and achievement in the introductory economics course: A case study. Journal of Economic Education, 13 (Winter); 33-39.
Wolfe, R. N., Kasmer, J. A. (1988). Type Versus Trait: Extraversion,
Impulsivity, Sociability, and Preferences for Cooperative and Competitive Activities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, (5): 864-871.