Researching Language Learning Motivation

A Concise Guide

Ali H. Al-Hoorie, Fruzsina Szabó, Ali H. Al-Hoorie, Fruzsina Szabó

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350166899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Language Arts
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

One of the most active areas in the field of second language acquisition, language learning motivation is a burgeoning area of research. Yet the plethora of new ideas and research directions can be confusing for newcomers to the discipline to navigate. Offering concise, bite-size overviews of key contemporary research concepts and directions, this book provides an invaluable guide to the contemporary state of the field. Making the discussion of key topics accessible to a wider audience, each chapter is written by a leading expert and reflects on cutting-edge research issues. From well-established concepts, such as engagement and learning goals, to emerging ideas, including contagion and plurilingualism, this book provides easy to understand overviews and analysis of key contemporary themes. Helping readers understand a field which can appear highly technical and overwhelming, Researching Language Learning Motivation provides valuable insights, perspectives and practical applications.

PART ONE

General Reflections

CHAPTER 1

Motivating in the Language Classroom: A Discourse of “Social Control”?

Ema Ushioda

Introduction

In this chapter, I focus on what Dörnyei (2001) has characterized as “motivational teaching practice” and consider the recommendations for classroom management and pedagogy that we develop for teachers based on our research. I examine how we portray the role of teachers as motivators who seek to shape students’ behaviors by using certain motivational strategies. Taking a critical perspective, I discuss some moral and ethical complexities in the motivational language teaching practices that we proffer, drawing partly on arguments I have developed at greater length in Ushioda (2020a).

I will begin by discussing the significant role that Dörnyei has played in making our research relevant to language teachers.

From “Motivation” to “Motivating”: Making Research Relevant to Teachers

Among Zoltán Dörnyei’s many contributions to the field of L2 motivation research, I think one of the most important has been to bridge the divide between research and practice, in an effort to make motivation theory and associated empirical insights relevant to language teachers. As those familiar with the sixty-year history of L2 motivation research will know, addressing the practical needs and concerns of language teachers was not traditionally a focus of our academic field of inquiry. In fact, this relative lack of emphasis on language teachers’ perspectives characterized the origins of the wider field of SLA (second language acquisition) research in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Essentially, SLA research sought to establish itself as the scientific study of second language learning from the perspective of the learners’ internal mental and psychological processes and linguistic development, rather than as the study of second language instruction and its impact on learning. Thus, in SLA research on motivation, as Dörnyei (1994a) neatly encapsulated it, the focus was on “motivation”—that is, on understanding this theoretical construct and its role in successful language learning—rather than on “motivating”—that is, understanding how to motivate language learners. Through the 1990s, growing debate across the L2 motivation field eventually brought about a greater concern with the latter more practitioner-oriented perspective, some thirty years into the field’s long history (for an overview, see Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011).

While this concern helped to stimulate more classroom-based forms of research inquiry, such research did not perhaps really speak to teachers directly until the publication in 2001 of Dörnyei’s now classic text on Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Following a concise and accessible summary of approaches to theorizing motivation in language education and educational psychology, the book discussed what “motivational teaching practice” should look like and provided a detailed account of the strategies that language teachers might use to implement such practices to motivate their students. The taxonomy of strategies illustrated in the book was based on the findings of empirical research conducted with teachers of English in Hungary (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998). In other words, this was a landmark text that translated theory and research into comprehensive practical guidance for language teachers.

In more recent years, we have seen a growing number of such books aimed at the professional language teaching community (e.g., Dörnyei, Henry & Muir, 2016; Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014; Hadfield & Dörnyei, 2013). Moreover, as evident from Lamb’s (2017) extensive review of the literature, the motivational dimension of language teaching has now grown to become a major area of empirical inquiry, thus strengthening the links between research and practice that Dörnyei sought to establish. Furthermore, we are seeing a small, but growing, body of research on motivation that is being conducted by teachers themselves in their own classrooms, through various forms of practitioner inquiry such as action research or exploratory practice (e.g., Banegas, 2013; Pinner, 2019; Sampson, 2016). In short, a focus on motivating language learners from the teacher’s perspective is now firmly established as a significant domain of inquiry in our field, and there is now a flourishing empirical literature on language teachers’ use of various strategies, practices, and interventions to motivate their learners (for a review, see Lamb, 2017).

The Role of Teachers in Motivating Students

Yet, a basic question I wish to pose in this chapter is whether we should indeed portray the role of teachers as motivators who seek to shape their students’ behaviors, as implicit in the pedagogical strategies for managing and enhancing classroom motivation that we advocate based on our research. The idea that teachers can resourcefully use various techniques, strategies, or a “bag of tricks” to motivate their students is certainly long established in the wider field of educational psychology. As Danziger (1997) highlighted in his historical overview of psychology as an emergent discipline, research interest in motivation evolved through recognition of the practical value of understanding how to influence people’s behavior. As he notes, this was particularly the case in relation to managing and influencing children’s behavior in the classroom following the widespread reforms and expansions of educational systems in the early twentieth century. Within mainstream educational psychology, this applied focus on how to motivate students has sustained the research agenda for many decades and continues to be a major area of inquiry (for an overview, see Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2014).

However, if we return to Danziger’s (1997) historical account of psychology as an emergent discipline, we find that this applied interest in understanding how to influence people’s behavior (whether in the classroom, the workplace, or the consumer market) meant that motivation research in the early twentieth century became situated in a discourse of “social control” and of understanding “how to play upon what individuals wanted” (p. 113) in order to influence and manipulate their behavior. This discourse was reflected, for example, in the use of rewards and incentives to motivate students, or to increase the productivity of a workforce; or in the use of clever advertising strategies aimed at the creation of desirable new “wants” (p. 112) or, in today’s vernacular, new “must-haves,” in order to increase consumer spending. It is this uncomfortable association between motivation and social control that gives me pause for thought and leads me to pose the question about how we portray the role of teachers in motivating their students and how we advocate the use of motivational strategies. In essence, the principle of applying strategies to motivate students raises some complex ethical issues about control, power, and manipulation in the classroom. It is to a critical consideration of these issues that I now turn. I will begin by examining the important distinction between internal and external control of motivation.

Internal versus External Control of Motivation

Across the major theoretical frameworks that have been influential in the L2 motivation field, we find a common distinction between internal and external motivational factors, or between internalized and less internalized forms of motivation. For example, in Gardner’s Lambert’s (1972) Social Psychological Model of L2 motivation, there is the distinction between instrumental orientation and integrative orientation. The former is defined by pragmatic extrinsic goals, such as learning a language in order to improve one’s employment prospects, while the latter is defined by a deep-rooted personal interest in the target language culture and people, and, in its strong form, an internal desire to be part of their community. In Deci and Ryan’s (1985) Self-Determination Theory (SDT) that has been influential in our field, particularly through the work of Kim Noels and her colleagues (e.g., Noels, Clément, & Pelletier, 1999; Noels et al., 2008; see also Oga-Baldwin & Hirosawa, this volume), there is a similar distinction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. When people are intrinsically motivated in an activity, their motivation comes from internal rewards such as feelings of enjoyment or a satisfying sense of challenge deriving from the process of activity engagement itself. When people are extrinsically motivated to do something, they engage in the activity as the means to some separable or external outcome, such as financial reward or career progression. Within SDT, there is also the distinction between internal and external regulation of motivation, which depends on the extent to which motivation originates within the person and is self-determined, or the extent to which motivation is controlled by external social forces such as teachers, parents, curriculum demands, or exam pressures. Finally, in Dörnyei’s (2009a) L2 Motivational Self System, a distinction between internalized and less internalized forms of motivation is what separates an ideal L2 self from an ought-to L2 self. The former represents how we want to see ourselves in the future as someone with proficient L2 skills, while the latter represents how others want or expect us to be, even if we may not fully identify with this future representation of ourselves. (For an overview of these theoretical frameworks, see Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2011.)

More recently, of course, there is now a growing focus on the interactions between internal and external or social-environmental influences on motivation, reflected in the application of complexity thinking to understanding the dynamics of L2 motivation (e.g., Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, 2015). Fundamentally, nevertheless, the distinction between internal and external motivation remains conceptually important in defining sources of influence and the locus of control from a pedagogical perspective. After all, in their relationship with their students, teachers are necessarily part of the external social environment, and hence the strategies they use to shape students’ motivation may serve either to strengthen their external control over this motivation or to foster its internal growth and self-regulation. For example, strategies such as using rewards, incentives, grades, or sanctions to motivate students to apply effort and work hard may achieve observable short-term effects. However, such external “carrot-and-stick” strategies keep motivation and student behavior firmly in the teacher’s control and power. This means that students may become dependent on the teacher to do the motivating for them, and they may struggle to develop any sense of personal control and agency in relation to their motivation and their learning. Controlling motivational strategies of this kind may thus lead to student behaviors such as obedience, compliance, fear, resistance, or even defiance, rather than to healthy forms of motivation. In contrast, strategies such as supporting students’ sense of autonomy and encouraging them to make personal choices and decisions about their learning may help to foster more internalized and self-determined forms of motivation (Ushioda, 2003). Within mainstream motivational psychology, there is substantial research evidence to show that fostering the internal growth and self-regulation of motivation are vitally important for promoting lasting behavioral change and psychological well-being (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2017).

In this respect, this is certainly the message that we tend to highlight when we translate our theoretical and research insights into implications for practice for language teachers. By and large, in other words, we argue against the use of controlling strategies by teachers, and we highlight instead the importance of nurturing students’ own motivation to learn. In Dörnyei’s (2001) framework for motivational teaching practice, for example, the essential starting point is to create “basic motivational conditions” in the classroom through establishing a positive and cohesive learning environment that will facilitate the healthy internal growth and development of motivation. In my own writing about motivation too, I have consistently emphasized the importance of promoting positive interpersonal relations, supporting students’ sense of autonomy, and fostering internally driven forms of motivation (e.g., Ushioda, 2003, 2012). The basic principle here is that, instead of looking for ways of motivating students through various external regulatory strategies, we should look for ways of orchestrating the conditions within which students will motivate themselves. Other researchers have similarly highlighted the value of autonomy-supportive teaching approaches in enhancing language learners’ intrinsic motivation (e.g., Noels, Clément, & Pelletier, 1999). In the contemporary era, this emphasis on promoting internally driven motivation is often associated with encouraging students to develop personally valued self-and-identity goals linked to language skills and supporting them in their motivational pathways toward achieving these desired future selves (e.g., Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014; Hadfield & Dörnyei, 2013).

A Discourse of “Social Control”?

Yet, however much we motivation researchers may want to advocate pedagogical approaches that promote internal rather than external forms of motivation, we are clearly doing language teachers a disservice if we ignore the challenging and complex realities they may face in their classrooms. After all, in many language classrooms around the world, students are there not out of personal choice or interest but because of curriculum requirements, as is almost invariably the case with the learning of English in compulsory education and university settings in non-Anglophone countries. Where foreign language skills and particularly English language skills are concerned, the primary emphasis in educational policies across the world is on their economic and social value in facilitating advantage and mobility in today’s competitive global marketplace. Thus, even while language teachers may strive to nurture students’ personal goals and interests and to foster internally driven forms of motivation, they may struggle to do so against a wider public policy and discourse of “social control” emphasizing the instrumentalist value of language skills for economic and social advancement.

This raises a critical question about the pedagogical complexities of managing these tensions between internal and external control of motivation. After all, however much they may want to encourage students to develop enjoyment in language learning and pursue their own goals and interests, teachers are all too aware of their professional responsibilities in guiding their students to meet externally imposed educational goals and curriculum requirements and to achieve the necessary learning outcomes for successful academic and social progression. How should teachers manage these motivational tensions?

Autonomy-Supportive Approaches as a Solution?

One approach that we commonly advocate in this regard is to support students’ sense of autonomy in making informed choices and decisions about their learning, within the necessary constraints of the curriculum framework (e.g., Dörnyei, 2001; Ushioda, 2003, 2012). As research evidence shows (Ryan & Deci, 2018), people’s readiness to align their behaviors with social regulations and constraints depends on the degree to which the social environment supports their sense of autonomy in making personal choices and decisions within this context. This is explained in relation to self-determination theory, according to which people have an innate psychological need for autonomy—that is, the sense that our actions and behaviors are self-determined, reflecting an authentic expression of our agentic self and our internal values. Importantly, this authentic expression of our agentic self and our internal values will entail aligning with behaviors and values in our surrounding sociocultural environment, since our need for autonomy is also linked to our psychological need for social relatedness and belonging (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In other words, people are more likely to be willing to do what they know they should do in society if they feel that they are exercising autonomy and personal choice. By the same token, they are less likely to feel willing if they experience no personal control or choice in the matter.

From a pedagogical perspective, therefore, autonomy-supportive approaches that promote students’ opportunities for choice and decision-making within a given framework are generally advocated as a constructive way for teachers to manage the tensions between internal and social control of motivation. The idea is that teachers can thus support students’ sense of autonomy in making choices and decisions that are true to their own values and that also align with what is socially valued and desirable and that are perceived (by the wider society) to be in their best interests. As Bronson (2000) has commented in relation to the socialization of children in this regard, their internal motivation to engage with culturally valued goals and activities is socially acquired in this way, or, as she succinctly puts it, “the child learns what to want” (p. 33).

Some Critical Perspectives from Nudge Theory

However, it seems to me that there is a delicate fine line between supporting students’ autonomy and internal motivation in this way, and essentially influencing and exercising “social control” over their motivation. Again in the context of wider public policy and discourses of “social control” around the instrumentalist value of language skills, I think it is especially pertinent here to refer to the concept of nudge theory from the field of behavioral economics, as elaborated and popularized by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), and as widely adopted in public policy in many countries across the world. In essence, nudge theory is described as a form of “libertarian paternalism” (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008, pp. 7–10) in that it promotes the libertarian view that people should be free to exercise autonomy and make their own choices, and yet it also promotes the paternalistic view that people should be steered—that is, nudged—to make the optimal choices that will be good for them and good for society. Nudging people in this way is achieved by strategically arranging the choice architecture in such a manner that people are more likely to make the “right” choices, such as selecting healthy food options, reducing their carbon footprint, or (at the time of writing this chapter manuscript) practicing social distancing responsibly during a global pandemic. In relation to selecting healthy food options, for example, arranging the choice architecture may involve physical designs and displays, such as making plentiful fresh fruit and salads visible at eye-level in self-service cafeterias; or it may entail strategic social messaging such as showing influential celebrities with glowing skin and toned bodies talking about the benefits of healthy eating. A basic principle in nudge theory is that people remain essentially free to make their own choices and decisions, yet they will almost invariably respond to the subliminal nudging practices used in public policy and choose well.

Despite the popular applications of nudge theory, its use in social and public policy to influence and subtly control people’s behavior ine...