Chapter 12 - Good Instruction Is Motivating

Abstract

This chapter attempts to integrate just two sets of child outcomes that are central to teaching and learning—academic skills and achievement motivation. This chapter examines both of them, with particular attention to how well findings that suggest the value of particular classroom practices in one dimension support or contradict findings on the value of those same practices in the other dimension. It is natural for achievement motivation researchers to study the effects of educational practices on children's motivation and for subject matter specialists to study the effects of instructional practices on children's learning. The analyses described in this chapter represent a very modest attempt to look across two domains of development that are assumed to be related, motivation and learning. Another study suggests that instruction endorsed by early childhood education experts may promote kindergartners', and perhaps older children's, social-motivational development at the expense of basic academic skills. The early childhood study, in particular, illustrates the value of simultaneously examining the effects of different practices on different child outcomes to determine whether any trade-offs exist. This chapter concludes that in addition to knowing which instructional strategies promote positive outcomes on average, good teachers must know their own students well and adapt generally effective instructional approaches to meet the needs of particular children.