After a loong break between my last entry, it is now time to go on with more 'academical' issues.
What is motivation? How do we get motivated for something in our life? How do teachers provide motivation for classes? How long does it last? Orr is there any certain time distinction for this?
I dont know how you feel while you are travelling in a place you have never been before but I feel like losing my consciousness and more trusting to relativity. The pain on my food, the hunger, the location, the weather or anything about feasibility as well as conditions of the time while travelling lose their presence and importance. This is what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi(C) calls 'Flow'. It is also called 'Optimal experience'. The question arises: Why am I in flow experience while travelling? One possible and reasonable answer comes from C: '' For many people, happiness comes from creating new things and making new discoveries.''
As I was re-creating my 'world' in newness by myself with my very clear goal and route in my map, It was pure enjoyment and fun. We have to consider the balance between challenges and skills also to be in flow. For instance, I would not go to Alaska without knowing skiing enough, it would not be that fun;)
*The challenging thing in teaching is keeping the distinction between boredom and anxiety and have the balance in flow zone.That requires following determinants:
- Finding the tasks which match with learners' interest, expertise and level
-Flexibility in activities and opportunity to control within action
-Feedbacks in the process
-Clear and structured goals
-INTRINSIC MOTIVATION!(This kind of learning occurs in a situation in which the most narrowly defined activity from which the learning occurs would be done without any external reward or punishment.)
Educators mainly focus cognitive engagement during the zone of flow. We all know that motivation is not sufficient for achieving. Cognitive engagement mediates to connect values, needs, competences, relatedness and curiosity with learning.
Examples from my experiences would be from Denmark, first. It is still staying surprisingly great idea for me to evaluate students with the game what they were used to play as a class activity. The second comes from Finland: Activities for addititon and subtraction with odd and even numbers while skating.(They had to find expected result(greatest even or odd) quickly.
