Sociocultural Influences On Student Motivation As Viewed Through The Lens Of Self-Determination Theory

Imagine doing what many educational researchers do-visit a classroom, observe teacher-student interactions, and formulate some forecasts about these students’ future motivation and learning. In a secondary school foreign language classroom, you might watch as the teacher (a) sets a challenging goal for students (e.g., learn 20 verbs on Monday, 20 nouns on Tuesday), (b) recommends some tried-and-true learning strategies (e.g., learn in pairs, prepare flashcards), (c) models what skill and expertise look like in this domain (e.g., play a YouTube video of native speakers), (d) encourages students to emulate those role models, (e) provides corrective feedback, (f) aids students’ self-control (e.g., suppress and override lesson-irrelevant temptations and distractions), and (g) evaluates students’ learning.