For Tuesday, Jan 16 (Snowy Day II)

1. Write a brief description of a class in your subject area that has good stage-environment fit. Take a look at the descriptions generated by methods groups in class on Tuesday. Note that many of the elements are similar across subject groups. They are often pretty general. This prompted questions during discussion about how you might accomplish these things.

As you write, try to think about the characteristics of your teaching that may be specific to methods or content in your subject area. What are the attributes of a "well-fitting" classroom that are particularly important in your subject area?

2. Reading notes. In class we discussed the two readings. Check with your base group members and get any notes they took.

First, we reviewed the section in Wigfield & Wagner that described intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I pointed out that in this scheme, as in some other motivation theories, we call "intrinsic" motivtation that is intrinsic to the task. In other words, it's not that is inside the person, it is that engaging in the task is its own reward (think video games here). We talked about some of the characteristics of intrinsically motivating tasks (choice, feedback directly from the activity, appropriate level of challenge, interesting activities, chance to increase competence, etc.). Building those characteristics into extrinsically-regulated tasks (think most of what you will be asking them to do) can feel more intrinsically-regulated, increasing motivation.

We also reviewed the Stephanou, et al article describing three different kinds of autonomy support. The homework for the whole class was to think of at least one method or activity from your methods class or observations of teachers in your field that you think supports cognitive autonomy. Then think of one that does not suport cognitive autonomy. We will be starting with a discussion based on this homework.

For those who missed class on Tuesday, write a description of these two activities/methods. For each, explaining how they support/don't support cognitive autonomy. In addition, contrast the two activities/methods in terms of whether they share some of the characteristics of intrinsically-motivated activity.