Question

Describe in your own words what motivation means to you. Now, look at how this relates to learning and your quest as scholars. Do you adhere to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Or, do you have some other internal mechanism that helps you focus, and most importantly, sustain your actions? How do the actions of others affect your motivations to complete a task? Describe your personal barriers to motivation.

Answer 1

Motivation provides a direction to one's need and desires and causes a person to repeat behavior again and again if satisfying. It is an internal process that allows a person to move towards one's goal and cannot be observed directly but can be noted through overt behavior of an individual.

Motivation as it is clear from above definition helps in initiation and persistence of desired activity. In case of learners motivation helps one to initiate a task and continue it until it is done completely. Motivation also helps in increased efforts and energy on the basis of the past satisfaction derived from a task it helps the learners to channelise their energy into more productive manner of learning. As per the definition of motivation mentioned above, learners motivation can be observed in their performance level, enhanced and high level performance denotes highly motivated individual either intrinsically or extrinsically.

Yes I adhere to Maslow Hierarchy of needs as it presents the systematic way of Living from a general need to a specific need. First and foremost comes the basic and physiological needs of the person without which an individual cannot survive and move ahead in life. Thereafter comes the need of safety covering the needs of freedom from danger and pain to ensure the survival of the fittest, only security and physiological needs alone cannot make an individual happy so there comes the need of belongingness which presents the desires of an individual to belong to others and form interpersonal relationships it denotes the adulthood age of a person. On moving ahead after securing all these needs a person comes in interaction with the society and struggles for status and positions of the society which are actually temporarily and gives short term satisfaction to an individual and in the search of peace the person moves towards self actualisation need in the need of finding the meaning of life.

Motivation can both be intrinsic and extrinsic as well. In extrinsic motivation others action value most to us such as in case of playing a match, the gestures and actions of audience towards a player affects their motivation level strongly to enhance the performance level.

There are some factors which keeps one away from getting the goal you desired. Some of the factors which act as barriers to me include:

? Financial stress

? Family pressure and structure

? Personality traits such as neuroticism, coping mechanism, locus of control, openness to experience, conscientiousness, etc.

? Peer influence

? And finally blur or unclear goals.