Radka Skalková

Pedagogical faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc

The purpose of my presentation is to introduce you to the topic of my dissertation. My article is called ”Motivation in Mathematics”. It is impossible to teach pupils, when they have no interest in the subject they are learning. I chose this subject matter because I think that this often ignored in lessons, especially in lessons of mathematics.

My presentation is divided into two parts:

What is motivation? There are a many kinds of motivation. Here I chose one of the most frequent motivations in pedagogy: ”Motivational factors are relatively temporary and reversible states that tend to energize or active the behavior of organisms.”[1, s.166]

It is important to distinguish between the concepts of psychological drive and biological need. All organisms require certain conditions to survive, and these conditions may be thought of as biological needs. Biological needs differ for different species, but each species has some requirements for survival.

Psychological drives impel the organism to respond. Most biological needs give rise to psychological drives; for example, the need for food produces the primary drive of hunger.

It is also important to divide two sources of motivation even though both are necessary for performance. Drive motivation refers to the internal source of psychological energy that drives the organism to do something. Incentive motivation refers to the organism’s expectation of reward for making a particular response.

It is not always easy to make the distinction between drive and incentive motivation in everyday contexts, but it is nevertheless important to do so.

It is very difficult to apply a generally used means of motivation to mathematics lessons. However, some of them are more effective than the rest. So I also present them in my article (e.g. historical note, mathematical crossword, didactic games etc.)

I want to present the results of my own mini-research, because I am conscious of the necessity to know the teacher‘s opinion on the importance of a motivation. So, I gave questionnaire to ten teachers of mathematics. There were nine questions about motivation in mathematics, for example: ”What kind of motivation do you use in your lessons?” etc.

Finally, the goal of my work is to draw teacher’s attention to the need of motivation. From my point of view it is one of the necessary conditions of successful education in each school subject, mathematics being no exception.

Literature:

[1] Gordon, W.C, Logan, F. A. Fundamentals of learning and motivation. 3. vyd. Dubuque: Brown&Benchmark, 1993. 239 s. ISBN 0-697-20927-X.

[2] Hrabal, V., Man, F., Pavelková, I. Psychologické otázky motivace. 2. vyd. Praha: SPN, 1989. 233 s. ISBN 80-04-23487-9.