Abstract
This chapter presents a three-part instruction sequence that may help teachers to enhance students’ autonomous motivation and capacity to cope with challenging subjects:
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Classroom Preparation. Aimed at creating a class culture enabling successful application of the next (primary) sequence parts. It includes activities promoting internalization of a constructive theory of success supporting a culture of ability improvement rather than demonstration and autonomous adherence to classroom rules.
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Sequence Application in Individual and Group Work. This phase starts with a joint student-teacher setting of a general learning objective and a corresponding implementation and evaluation plan. This is followed by structured ongoing student work, where students work according to the plan while receiving three competence supports: (a) informational feedback, (b) five teacher supports for coping with non-success, and (c) peer support. Then, there is bidirectional summary and a joint setting of a new goal.
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All-classroom interim and summary activities. These are aimed at (a) identifying classroom processes that undermine students’ autonomous motivation, (b) fostering a constructive theory of success and ability-improvement culture.
At the end, I present some limitations of the sequence and point to important areas of learning and personal development in which less structured approaches might be much more beneficial.
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Assor, A. (2016). An Instruction Sequence Promoting Autonomous Motivation for Coping with Challenging Learning Subjects. In: Liu, W., Wang, J., Ryan, R. (eds) Building Autonomous Learners. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-630-0_8
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