Sunday, November 16, 2008

Effort and Ability: the development of theory

This video presentation examines effort and ability as they relate to motivation theory. The development, refinement, and elaboration among theories is presented in a chronological order beginning with Rotter's 1966 Theory of Social Learning. The video culminates with Folmer et al. (2007) describing considerations for teachers, practitioners, and investigators when applying motivational theories to younger children.

The movie is about 11 minutes long and is a 72 Mb download. You'll need to use QuickTime to view the movie.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi all,

Please don't be distracted by the "flame" transition about half-way through. Not sure how it happened but I liken it to Hayden's Surprise Symphony— just making sure you are staying awake!

Mary & the Effort Team

Debrayh said...

Excellent work. I especially like the self-reflection questions at the end. If you guys don't mind I would like to share this video with my graduate student who is interested in learning theories and locus of control.

Anonymous said...

Nice job condensing 30 years of research to 11 minutes. Well done!
When you were talking about effort as being malleable under stability and controllable under control, I did not see any distinction. Did I miss something?

Jozsef said...

Wow!!! This team’s efforts and abilities is out of control and must be regulated.
Great job. Do you guy’s have this in a power point? Or can it be transferred to one.
I would like to print out frames.

Mark said...

Nice summary. The pace was pleasant. I am beginning to come around to the idea of not treating students any differently because of a perceived low ability of a student. For example, when I give back an exam with a low grade on it I make a quick decision on whether the person was low effort or low ability. But how do I know? Stereotypes? I need to remind myself that I do not know the answer to whether the low score was from low ability or low effort.

Anonymous said...

Mark,
Thanks for you comments. With regard to your final sentence, I wonder if you could pose a question to the student inquiring what they think they could do differently the next time.
Mary