Motivation for education

Motivation can refer to the emphasis or impulse necessary to satisfy a need or perform an action; there are 2 types of motivation:

· Intrinsic motivation — related to a personal understanding of the world (looking for new things and challenges).

· Extrinsic motivation — related to external incentives (achieving the desired result).

The article “La motivación en el contexto educativo” carried out in July 2018 by the “Intituto SERCA” (La motivación en el contexto educativo), states that intrinsic motivation is the objective of teachers or instructors through their teaching.

How to know if the students of the different careers are motivated if we do not first know the motivation of their mentors? To find out the practice “moving motivators” of Management 3.0 can be an ideal element to help teachers to know their motivation before boosting the motivation of their students, the elements of the practice are scored below:

1. Curiosity: I have many things to research and think about

2. Acceptance: The people around me approve of what I do and what I am

3. Power: there is enough room to influence what happens around me.

4. Relationship: I have good social contacts with the people at my work.

5. Objective: My purpose in life is reflected in the work I do.

6. Honor: I am proud that my personal values ​​are reflected in how I work.

7. Mastery: My work defies my competition, but is still within my abilities.

8. Freedom: I am independent OF others with my work and my responsibilities.

9. Order: There are enough rules and policies for a stable environment.

10. Status: My position is good and recognized by the people who work with me.

The execution of the practice was carried out through the Zoom and Miro tools to a team made up of 4 instructors from upper secondary education in Mexico, who are teaching distance classes, to know what the motivators are instructors and how they can benefit from generating actions on them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only generated a large-scale impact on the world economy but also on the education sector, in which we have been required to seek new formats in which instructors are prepared with digital tools to bring teaching to as many students as possible; Despite the great effort it is true, that not all students can count on the necessary means, here lies the importance of strengthening the motivators of the instructors and that they can replicate the learning in teaching with all the students who have the opportunity to continue your education online.

I invite you to know the 10 intrinsic motivators on the Management 3.0 page https://management30.com/practice/moving-motivators/

The objective of the experiment consisted of supporting the team instructors through an initiative generated by the institutional management that seeks to generate a series of innovative practices that can help increase the skills in the team, in this dynamic each member must order the 10 motivators according to the degree of importance that each one considers and subsequently an average percentage of team motivation is determined.

The dynamics to execute the practice consisted of the following steps:

1. Each member of the team orders the 10 motivators according to their degree of importance, the most important on the left side and ending with the least important on the right side, a weighting is used according to the position of the motivator, for example, if the motivator “freedom” had the greatest importance, it was weighted with 10 points and if the motivator “power” was the least important, it was weighted with 1 point. Another example would be to place the motivator of order if his in the center, in place five, then this, is weighted with 5 points, and this is done for the 10 motivators.

2. Once we have the weighting according to the position of each motivator that the members determined, all values ​​obtained from each motivator are listed and the summation is made, for example, in the case of the motivator “freedom” the participants chose it as one of the most important; two participants placed it as the most important in position ten, and two more participants, placed it in position nine, this would give us a sum of 38 points, therefore, it is the most important motivator at the team level.

3. Once we conclude the sum of the result of the weighting by the position of the motivators, then we order the overall motivators of the team from highest to lowest. In the event of a tie between the scores of two or more motivators, the team votes for the one that is most important at the team level, for example, if the score for the motivator “power” obtained 15 points and the motivator for “ Relationships ”also obtained 15 points, everyone will have to vote for which one is in the most important position.

4. Finally, the team members share their views and conclusions.

As a facilitator, I learned that dynamics can yield similar results in the motivation of team participants, but there are also exceptions and this may be related to personality traits and/or circumstances in which we find ourselves. It is important to clarify that there are no bad motivators, only individual needs or desires and that as a team we seek to achieve.

The team that participated in the practice observed that the motivator with the highest common score was “freedom”; conclude that there is a great similarity in motivators in general throughout the team and consider it important to generate actions for motivators that can support teaching in education, such as “mastery” where the ideas and skills of the member who grant them More importance to this motivator can be shared to strengthen the team in distance learning.

My next experiment with this practice will be to evaluate the possibility of applying motivation in a specific activity. Exemplifying the above, it could be interesting to know, if for all instructors to attend training the motivator “mastery” is among the five most important motivators, or if we can take actions to increase the score of this motivator so that training is more beneficial. I am also interested in evaluating the actions that the team has taken for its motivators and discussing whether these have influenced the improvement of teaching or even if they have replicated the practice of motivation with their students.

I invite you to do this practice for yourself, with your group of friends or with a work team. The practice of motivators does not have a fixed periodicity, however, as advice, I recommend defining a period that allows you to meet different needs or evaluate behavior in different circumstances, for example, you can evaluate the motivation of a team when faced with a new challenge, when completing a project, or simply by knowing the basic motivation with which your team starts a new educational cycle.