Methods of Teaching

 
l
explain the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and between
mastery learning goals and performance learning goals
 
l
identify their personal motivational style
 
l
explain the interdependence between learning and motivation
 
l
identify six actions that characterize self-regulated learning.
Unit resources
E. Vockell, ‘Self-Regulation of Learning’, Educational Psychology: A Practical Approach, 
, 
acced on 5 March 2013. 
The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, ‘Defining Self-Regulated 
Learning’, Self-Regulation section2.html>, accessed on 5 March 2013.

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74
UNIT 1
UNIT 4
UNIT 5
UNIT 3
UNIT 6
UNIT 7
UNIT 2
ASSOCIATE DEGREE IN EDUCATION/B.ED. (HONS) ELEMENTARY
Week 16: Self-regulated learning
Sub-topics
• Becoming your own teacher
• Parents and teachers attitudes towards self-regulated learning 
• Interdependence between learning and motivation
• Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• Mastery learning goals and performance learning goals
NOTE TO FACULTY: Learning is covert – without the help of medical technology, we do 
not have a window on what is going on in the brain. As such, it has been difficult, if not 
impossible, to develop a meaningful definition or description of learning. We judge that 
learning has occurred by observing that a person has new knowledge, new skills, and/
or different attitudes. Because learning cannot be directly observed and must be inferred 
from observable change, contemporary statements about learning describe it as change 
that is a gain (rather than as a loss). A person can do something or knows something 
today that that person did not know or could not do yesterday. 
As theorists began to think of learning as change, they noted that learning is a human 
activity that one person cannot do for another. A teacher can create favourable conditions 
for learning, but the learner learning has to enact the mental processes that make learn-
ing happen. If learning is a self-determined process, theorists reasoned, why not teach 
children how to do it when they start to school? This, briefly and somewhat primitively, is 
the reasoning behind psychologists and teachers interest in self-regulated learning. In 
one fashion or another, all learning is self-regulated, so let’s make self-regulated learning 
deliberate and systematic. This unit is an introduction to self-regulated learning. You will 
encounter the concept and teaching practices related to the concept in other courses in 
your degree programmes. Week 16, session 1 is described below.
Week 16, session 2 can be used to strengthen Student Teacher’s understanding of 
motivation. While most of them undoubtedly know the difference between intrinsic 
and extrinsic motivation, the parallel concepts of mastery learning goals and perfor-
mance learning goals will probably be new for them. You may want to distinguish 
between motivation, the desire to achieve a particular outcome or goal, and volition 
(i.e. the determination to achieve a particular outcome or goal). 
Week 16, session 3 can be used to study the ‘how’ of self-regulated learning. What 
do Student Teachers need to learn to become their own teachers? The two Internet 
resources listed above are invaluable. If there is adequate access to the Internet, you 
may want to assign reading at least one of those sites as homework before this session.

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COURSE GUIDE: Methods of Teaching