Student Motivation & Engagement Flashcards

A GED student with high self-efficacy consistently underperforms on timed practice tests despite demonstrating mastery in untimed settings. According to self-determination theory, which intervention most directly addresses the likely motivational disruption?

Answer: Restore the student's sense of autonomy by collaboratively setting incremental time goals

Self-determination theory identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as core psychological needs. The student's competence is established in untimed settings, so the disruption is likely autonomy-related — the imposed time constraint removes perceived control. Collaboratively setting incremental time goals restores ownership over the process, directly addressing the SDT deficit without undermining existing competence beliefs.

A GED teacher notices that a student's intrinsic motivation decreases after receiving a small weekly cash reward for completing assignments, even after the reward is removed. This phenomenon is best explained by which psychological construct?

Answer: The overjustification effect, because the external reward shifts the student's perceived locus of causality

The overjustification effect occurs when an external reward causes an individual to reattribute their motivation from internal ('I do this because I find it interesting') to external ('I do this for the reward'). When the reward is removed, the intrinsic motivation does not fully recover because the perceived locus of causality has shifted. This is distinct from reactance (which involves a perceived threat to freedom) and learned helplessness (which involves perceptions of inability).

Two GED students have identical math scores but very different response patterns to failure. Student A increases effort and tries alternative strategies after a wrong answer. Student B disengages and says 'I'm just not a math person.' According to Dweck's achievement goal theory and implicit theories of intelligence, which classroom practice would MOST effectively shift Student B's orientation?

Answer: Providing process-focused feedback that explicitly links Student B's errors to specific, changeable strategies

Student B displays a fixed mindset (entity theory) — the belief that math ability is a fixed trait. Dweck's research shows that process-focused feedback (targeting strategies and effort rather than outcomes or ability) is the most direct intervention for shifting from a fixed to a growth mindset. It explicitly communicates that errors are linked to strategies that can be changed, not to immutable ability. Reducing difficulty risks reinforcing the belief that the student cannot handle challenging material, and public comparison with Student A could increase ego threat.

A GED instructor uses a mastery-based grading system where students can retake assessments. Despite this, a returning adult student continues to avoid retakes after initial failure. Expectancy-value theory would predict that the primary barrier is most likely:

Answer: High attainment cost, because retaking signals to the student that they failed, threatening their adult identity

Expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al.) includes four cost components: effort cost, opportunity cost, loss of valued alternatives, and attainment cost (the psychological cost to one's identity or sense of self). For adult GED learners, retaking a failed assessment can carry high attainment cost because it conflicts with an adult professional identity. Since a mastery system already removes ability-signaling barriers and provides opportunity, the most theoretically precise barrier is attainment cost — the threat to self-concept that re-attempting a failed task creates for adults.

A GED teacher wants to use goal-setting to increase student persistence, but research on proximal vs. distal goals suggests a nuanced approach. For a student who is four months from the GED exam and currently scoring 20 points below the passing threshold, which goal structure is BEST supported by empirical motivation research?

Answer: A hierarchy of proximal sub-goals feeding into the distal goal, with the proximal goals adjusted as competence grows

Bandura and Schunk's research on goal-setting shows that the most effective structure combines proximal sub-goals with a distal goal. Proximal goals provide immediate feedback that builds self-efficacy, while the distal goal maintains motivational direction. Crucially, proximal goals should be calibrated upward as competence increases — static proximal goals lose their motivational function once they become too easy. Exclusively proximal goals can reduce strategic thinking, and a single midpoint goal fails to provide the high-frequency self-efficacy feedback that struggling learners require.

During a GED class discussion, a teacher observes that a student makes a correct answer, then immediately qualifies it with 'I just guessed' even though the teacher knows the student studied that material. This pattern appears repeatedly. According to attribution theory, this student is most likely demonstrating which maladaptive attribution style, and what is the highest-leverage teacher response?

Answer: External-unstable attribution for success; teacher should assign more independent tasks to build internal locus of control

Attributing success to 'luck' (guessing) is a classic external-unstable attribution — the cause is outside the self and not controllable. In Weiner's attribution framework, this pattern prevents the student from internalizing success as evidence of ability or effort, which undermines both self-efficacy and future persistence. The highest-leverage response is structured independent work that generates traceable success the student cannot easily attribute to external causes, gradually shifting the locus of control inward. Public recognition (option D) risks social threat without addressing the attribution mechanism itself.