Context for your enquiry : The broad objective of this research is to evaluate the correlation amongst students’ motivation and engagement in learning activities. In what ways do students’ behaviours change dependent on the motivational nature of a task? This research hopes to answer this question and potentially identify successful ways of engaging and motivating students within the classroom. Motivation should be encouraged through inclusive teaching and learning practices, in which the learner is motivated by the curriculum and pedagogy which are relevant and interesting which in turn can create intrinsic rewards. My research will be enquiring whether this is enough to produce engagement in an activity or whether extrinsic motivators have a bigger impact.
Aims:
To determine student commitment levels in learning activities.
To identify whether extrinsic motivators have a clear impact on student behaviour.
To evaluate factors that influences the level of participation of the students to the learning activities.
Rationale: The rationale of this research is to gage how important motivation is in an inclusive classroom. To what level are the students involved in the learning activities? What are the elements that impact the student’s level of commitment in the learning activities? Do extrinsic motivators have a direct impact on student behaviour and engagement? I will be investigating whether there is a correlation between engagement and intrinsic /extrinsic motivation and how this can help to produce better outcomes in a lesson.
Methodology: A correlational study will be used to investigate the connection between learners’ motivation and the level of participation in an inclusive classroom. For this research, both the survey method and naturalistic observation will be used. Observation will be useful when studying student’s behaviours during task engagement, while the survey will be used to collect data on student’s achievement and attitudes towards their learning activities. The same group will be use twice using similar pieces of work, for the first exercise no extrinsic motivators will be used during the assessed task only verbal praise will be used. During the second activity prizes, stickers and praise will be used as motivation to assess changes in the students’ behaviour. I will be carrying out the research, using my own class, this will ensure the children feel relaxed and are confident to raise any concerns with myself throughout the process, as they are familiar with me. As I will be leading the activity this will enable me to observe the children in their natural environment. After both activities I will then hand out a survey, which will ask the children about what they enjoyed, which lesson they preferred and why, which lesson did they feel they learnt more in and why. Once the children have completed the survey individually, we will have an informal reflective group discussion about the lessons. After this each child from the group will be individually interviewed. The interview will be informal, during this process together we will be looking through the survey that they completed and the work that they produced. I will be asking how the individual felt through the activity, what they found hard and why, which lesson they enjoyed and why, which lesson they felt they did better on. The questions in the survey and interview will be similar. I will be using the interview to further understand the results from the survey and how the child faired during the activities.
Timetable for Research:
01/05/17- Send Home Consent Forms
08/05/17- Conduct First Activity (use of intrinsic motivators)
09/5/17- Conduct Second Activity (use of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators)
09/05/17-Children to Complete Survey
10/05/17- Individual interviews
11/05/17-15/05/17- Collate all research
The structure should be as follows:
Introduction
How many sections or chapters you use to introduce your project is not important. What matters is that you:
? Establish why your topic is of interest and importance. This should be done by locating your research questions in the context of current research and theoretical issues, or alternatively in the context of professional debate and practice
? Summarise previous research
? Prepare the reader for your research by indicating gaps in previous research and how your study might fill them or by raising questions about previous research that your study will try to answer
? Introduce your study by stating the purpose and the research questions and, where appropriate, the research hypotheses; and by providing a justification for the methods that you used
With regard to the introduction, the main difference between a report and a dissertation is its length. Your supervisor will guide you on this.
Method
The contents of this will vary considerably but you will need at least to describe who took part, what you used and the procedure you followed. The following are the sub- sections that would commonly be found in the Method:
Design
You need to say whether the design is qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. Justify your decision in relation to the research questions. Where the research design you have used is relatively complex (e.g. you have used a number of experimental conditions, or you have a variety of control groups or measures), it is useful to start the Method with a sub-section describing the structure of the research.
Participants
You must provide relevant information about your sample and how they were recruited. You should describe major demographic characteristics such as age, with means and standard deviations, and gender composition. Report other characteristics such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, years of education, first language if they are
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relevant to the results. You should report how many people took part and the sizes of different experimental groups. If any participants who began the study did not complete, give an account of numbers and an explanation. You should preserve the anonymity of participants and institutions.
Ethical considerations
You will describe the ethical considerations and procedure(s) followed for obtaining ethical approval. This can be in a separate section or included in the participants section.
Materials and Apparatus
If relevant, briefly describe any materials or apparatus used.
Procedure
This subsection describes how the study was conducted. Include the instructions to participants but summarise or paraphrase these unless the precise wording is unusual or represents an experimental manipulation. If you are using a published test or questionnaire, there is no need to reproduce it. Describe how you allocated people to groups, randomised or balanced the order of presentation of tasks or questions. If someone can tell what you did from reading your procedure section, you have succeeded.
Scoring or process of analysis
Unless the data you have collected is very simple in character, you should finish the Method by saying how the raw information you collected from participants was collated and how any scores or summary information was extracted from it. If you used qualitative analysis, you need to explain the process, e.g. how you developed codes, grouped them and extracted themes.
Results
Here you report what you found in an organized and coherent way that corresponds to the order of your research questions. It is often better to divide this section into subsections. In a quantitative study, descriptive statistics will generally precede inferential statistics.
If you use tables or figures, make sure they are adequately labelled. Never present tables without accompanying explanatory text. Tell your reader what to look for, where to find it and what it means. Avoid large numbers of tables – or figures. Often a brief section of text will be better than a table.
In reporting statistical tests, you should follow APA advice. Avoid writing anything like the ‘Results were significant….’ or ‘A t test showed the groups differed….’ Instead try to give a qualitative or semi-qualitative description and then qualify it with the statistical results, e.g. ‘older parents were less authoritarian but no more permissive (Age & Authoritarian Scale, r = -.54, p < .01; Age & Permissiveness Scale, r = -.12, ns).
In reporting qualitative analyses you need to provide sufficient information about your method to allow the reader to understand what you have done and to check it. For example, if you use open-ended interviews, put a copy of an interview transcript in an appendix showing how you coded it. Provide a full list of your coding categories.
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Explain how you worked from the transcript.
It is harder to put an estimate on the length of your Method and Results, because this will depend to a considerable extent on precisely what you did. However, a rough rule of thumb is that the two sections combined should make up just under half of the whole dissertation. One implication of this is that the Results section is generally expected to provide a reasonably in-depth examination of your data.
Discussion
Discussion sections should normally begin with a clear statement of the answers to your research questions indicated by your results. This should be justified by referring to particular results but avoid repeating what you have written in the results section at the same level of detail.
You should relate your results to the work of others and consider the reasons for any discrepancies. As appropriate, you may consider how your methodology might be improved.
You may also consider the theoretical and practical implications of your findings. Be careful not to go too far in what you claim.
If you discuss the direction which future research might take, try to be as specific as possible about why it is needed, what it should try and achieve, and how it might be accomplished.
Discussion sections in dissertations are usually about 3,000 words.
References
This section is important. Other people reading your report/dissertation may wish to follow up your references. If these are incomplete or unclear, they will be unable to do this. A bibliography is not sufficient. Please remember to acknowledge all quotations taken from the work of other people. Use as few references from texts as possible-it is always better to paraphrase what you have read rather than use extended quotes. All references cited in the text should be included and the referencing should use the APA style.
Appendices
The crucial information for your study should be in the main text. You may use an Appendix for additional information, such as copies of instruction sheets, questionnaires, interview schedules and sample transcripts, and further statistical details such as exploratory data analyses. Do consult your supervisor about whether your write-up needs an Appendix and, if so, what it should contain.
