Bab 3

MOTIVATION, RELATIONSHIP, AND SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS

SOCIAL MOTIVES
Social motives are needs and desires that are learned through experiences with the
social world. Interest in social motives stems from Henry Murray’s (1938) long catalog
of needs (or motives), which included the needs for affiliation or relatedness, which is
the motive to be securely connected to other people, which we described earlier in the
chapter. This involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring warm, close, personal
relationship.
Adolescence can be an especially important juncture in achievement motivation
and social motivation (Henderson & Dweck, 1990). New academic and social pressures
force adolescents toward new roles that involve more responsibility. As adolescents
experience more intense achievement demands, their social interests might cut into the
time they need for academic matters.

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP
Students’ relationships with parents, peers, friends, teachers, mentors, and others
can profoundly affect their achievement and social mitivation:
PARENTS: research has been done on links between parenting and students’ motivation.
Studies have examined family demographic characteristic, child-rearing practices, and
provision of spesific experiences at home (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1988).
>>>demographic characteristic: parents with more edication are more likely than less
educated parents to believe that their involvement in their child’s education is important,
to be active participants in their child’s education, and to have intellectually stimulating
materials at home (Schneider & Coleman, 1993).
>>>child-rearing practices: even though demographic factors can affect students’
motivations, more important are the parents’ child-rearing practices (Eccles, 1993;
Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998). Here are some positive parenting practices that
result in improved motivation and achievement:
1. knowing enough about the child to provide the right amount of challenge and the
right amount of support
2. providing a positive emotional climate, which motivates children to internalize
their parents’ values and goals.
3. modeling motivated achievement behavior: working hard and persisting with
effort at challenging task.
>>>provision of specific experiences at home: in addition to general child-rearing
practices, parents can provide specific experiences at home to help atudents becomes
more motivated

PEERS
Peers can affect a student’s motivation through social comparison, social competence an
motivation, peer co-learning, and peer group influences (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele,
1998)
TEACHERS
Many children who do not do well in school consistenly have negative interactions with
their teachers (Stipek, 2002).
Researchers have found that students who feel they have supportive, caring teachers are
more strongly motivated to engange in academic work than students with unsupportive,
uncaring teachers (McCombs, 2001; Newman, 2002; Ryan & Deci, 2002)

TEACHERS AND PARENTS

In chapter 3, we highlighted the important role that parents play in children’s
development, as well as strategies that teacher can use to increasingly involve parents in
their children’s education.

SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS
In this section we will focus on how socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and gender can in
fluence motivation and achievement a special focus is diversity.
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND ETHNICITY: the diversity within ethnic minority
groups that we discussed in chapter 5 also is evident in their achievement. For example,
many Asian American students have a strong academic achievement orientation, but
some do not.
THEACHERS WHO CARE TEACHERS WHO DO NOT CARE
Teaching Makes and effort to make Teaches in a boring way, gets off-task,
behaviors class interesting; teaches in a teaches while students aren’t paying
special way attention
Communication Talks to me, pays attention, Ignores, interrupt, ecreams, yells
style asks question, listen
Equitable Is honet and fair, keeps Embarrasses, insults
treatment and promises, trusts me, tells the
respect truth
Concern about Asks what’s wrong, talk to Forgets name, does nothing when I do
individuals me about my problems, acts something wrong, doesn’t explain
as a friend, asks when I need things or answer question, doesn’t try to
help, takes time to make sure help me
I understand, calls on me.

Sandra Graham (1986, 1990) has conducted anumber of studies that reveal not
only a stronger role of socioeconomic status than of ethnicity in achievement but also the
importance of studying ethnic minority student motivation in the context of general
motivational theory.

GENDER
Our discussion of gender and motivation focuses on how males and females differ
in their beliefs and values. Female and male students’ competence-related beliefs vary by
achievement context.
With regard to achievement values, beginning in high school, do not value math
achievement as highly as boys do (Eccles & Others, 1993).