Enhancing motivation

Glyn C. Roberts

FEPSAC Meeting in Bucharest

October 2002

How wolud you enhance motivation?

• · Goal setting
• · Change the motivational climate
• · Improve the motivational climate
• · Be concerned about the criteria of succes and failure you use

With children, what would you do?

• · Individual remediation?
• · Change the adults in charge
• · Educate parents, and coaches on mastery procedures?

Enhancing motivation

When enhancing motivation for children, we need to think of ways to enhance the climate. With more elite, or older athletes, we often use individual remediation procedures such as goal setting.

Clearly, being task involved is beneficial for children (and adults) in sport experience!

• · Whether one is task or ego involved afects one's perceptions concerning belifs about what causes success, the purposes of sport, appropriate achievement strategies, perception of competence, and enjoyment and interest. Generally as far as the motivational equation is concerned, being task involved is better!

• · For coaches, doing wht we can to enhance the task involving nature of competitive sport means we are doing our best to be efective coaches as far as the motivational equation is concerned.

How can we enhance task involvement?

• Abstract
• Coaching is based on the belief that it means to develop the professional and personal potentials, individual abilities and participation in the process of learning.

ENHANCING MOTIVATION

GLYN C. ROBERTS, NORWAY

Key word: motivation, questionnaire

How would you enhance motivation?

• · Goal setting
• · Change the motivational climate
• · Improve self efficacy
• · Be concerned about the criteria of success and failure you use

With children, what whould you do??

• · Individual remediation?
• · Change the adults in charge?
• · Educate parents, and coaches on mastery procedures?

Enhancing motivation

When enhancing motivation for children, we need to think of ways to enhance the climate.With more elite, or older athletes, we often use individual remediation procedures such as goal setting.

Clearly, being task involved is beneficial for children (and adults) in sport experience!

Whether one is task or ego involved affects one's perceptions concerning beliefs about what causes success, the purposes of sport, appropriate achievement strategies, perception of competence, and enmjoyment and interest.Generally, as far as the motivational equation is concerned, being task involved is better!

For coaches, doing what we can to enhance the task involving nature of competitive sport means we are doing our best to be effective coaches as far as the motivational equation is concerned.

How can we enhance task involvement?

The coach plays a crucial role in construction of the motivational climate perceived by the athlete.

What we know is that time and effort should be spent in developing strategies and instrustional practices to facilitate the teacher or coach creating a task involving motivational climate for the athlete.If we are concerned with optimizing the motivation of the athlete, we cannot ignore the impact our coaching style has on the perception of stress,affect, and motivation of the athlete.

How do we go about creating a mastery motivational climate?

Much has been written on the appropriate coaching style for children(e.g., Smith& Smoll,Weiss etc)

But a relatively new procedure is the procedure developed by Epstein, used by Ames (1992),and adopted by us in Sport and physical education(e.g.,Treasure & Roberts, 1995;2002;Theeboom et al, 1995)

The TARGET Procedure

Creating a mastery climate

T Task considerations

A Authority

R How we give rewards

G Grouping factors

E How we evaluate

T The time we give to complete task

Motivation intervetion strategies

1.Task design

• · A central element of any achievement context is the design of tasks and learning activities
• · Make tasks interesting, involve variety and personal challenge
• · Establish realistic short term goals
• · Help develop effective learning strategies
• · Give choice of tasks

2. Authority structure

• · The locus of responsibility in the learning situation is defined as the degree to which coaches and teachers involve athletes in decision making
• · Give opportunities to choose and make decisions in the learning process
• · Encourage athletes to take responsibility for their own learning and use of practice time
• · Develop personal control and independence

3. Rewards and recognition

• · The use of rewards and incentives are part of the competitive sport experience for everyone,but they don't always have the desired effect
• · Recognize individual effort and achievement
• · Give each participant reward and encouragement for effort and achievement striving
• · Give all recognition and rewards PRIVATELY

4. Grouping

• · Grouping can have motivating or demotivating effects depending on the criteria of success used
• · Provide opportunity for group learning
• · Utilize social aspects for learning
• · Use varied grouping factors
• · Encourage cooperative learning

5. Evaluation

• · How athlets are evaluated is one of the most salient features of any achievement context.The meaning of the evaluation to the athelete is the crucial factor
• · Evaluation should be self referenced
• · Give ample opportunity to improve performance
• · Eliminate normative evaluation

6.Timing

• · The pace of instruction and the time allotted to completing tasks affects motivation
• · Adjust task and time requirements for athletes who are experiencing difficulty in aquiring skills
• · Alow athletes to determine the optimal rate of progress in learning

Only a few studies have used the TARGET procedures to determine if motivation can be enhanced in sport

By using the TARGET procedures, children in soccer placed into a mastery climate were more motivated and displyed more desirable beliefs about achievement than children in a performance climate (Treasure& Roberts,1995; Treasure & Roberts, 2002)

Children in an organized sport setting that used TARGET procedures reported more enjoyment and exhibited better skills than children in a competitive setting (Theeboom, De Knop, & Weiss, 1995)

Other studies, and the future ?

Many studies going on now. We are slowly recognizing that in order to make the competitive situation for children better, we need to sensitize parents and coaches to the dynamics of the motivation process.

Concluding remarks on motivational climate

An overwhelming body of research confirms that being in a state of task involvment is more conducive for motivation than a state of ego involvement, most of the time!!!!

Goals are orthogonal! Being high in both goal states is desirable. Rather than depressing high ego involvement, research says that enhancing task invovement moderates the debilitating effects of being high in ego involvemnent (Roberts et al, 1998)

The athletes most at risk motivationally are the high ego and low task oriented ones.

What to do with older athletes?

When we discuss more mature individuals, we discuss individual remediation programs!!

What would you do?

Enhancing motivation through goal setting

Why goal setting works?

• · Goal directs attention to important aspects of skill
• · Goal mobiliye efforts of performers
• · Goal prolong performer persistence at task
• · Goals foster development of new strategies

Goal setting principles

• · Set specific goals
• · Set challenging but realistic goals
• · Set long and short term goals: The staircase principle
• · Set mastery goals, not outcome goals
• · Write down goals
• · Develop goal achivement strategies
• · Consider players own goal involvement approach
• · Foster goal comittement
• · Provide goal support
• · Provide goal evaluation

Goals questionnaire

• 1. What is your long term dream goal?
• 2. What is your dream goal this year?
• 3. What is a realistic outcome goal this year?
• 4. Can you still accept yourself if you don't achieve your goal this year?
• 5. Can you set a goal of best effort and be satisfied with that?
• 6. What is an important goal for you to concentrate on this year in terms of your mental preparation?
• 7. Set a goal for tomorrow's training session, can you set a goal for each training session?
• 8. How can we improve harmony on this team?

Areas in which goals can be set:

• · Individual skills
• · Team skills
• · Fitness
• · Enjoyment
• · Psychological preparation

Common problems

• · Failing to set specific goals
• · Setting too many goals too soon
• · Failing to adjust goals (e.g., after injury)
• · Failing to set mastery goals
• · Not following up and providing evaluation and support

Abstract

The coaches need to think of ways of enhance the climate, doing what they can to enhance the task involving nature of competitive sport and develop effective learning strategies.