A Motivational View of Constructivist‐informed Teaching

Abstract

Constructivist and conceptual change perspectives on learning have given rise to a number of models of constructivist classroom teaching. Motivation has been recognized as an important factor in the construction of knowledge and the process of conceptual change, so one could expect that motivation strategies would be integral components of constructivist‐informed teaching. The purpose of this paper was to examine, by literature review, the extent to which motivation strategies have been included in extant models of constructivist‐informed teaching. The study involved the development of a list of motivation strategies, based on current motivation constructs. Several constructivist‐informed teaching models were then analysed. It was found that these models were rather limited in the extent to which they had explicitly integrated motivation. It was also found that some aspects of the models were not entirely in accord with current views of motivation. Finally, a motivational model of constructivist‐informed teaching was developed and its three components were described.