MOTIVATION

What actually is motivation? A driving force which drag us towards something? All we know is whichever field we are in there are always some kind of unknown force which guide us towards our objectives. Students study to get a good result or to attain a scholarship. On the other hand Staffs’ works hard to earn a promotion. We call it “motivation”. This unknown force can be extremely helpful especially in the field of education, but unless we use it wisely.

Both intrinsic motivation as well as extrinsic motivation can be applied in teaching. As some students’ study really hard to get Prizes in Prize day of the school while others work hard to realize a scholarship at the end of their school year to go for a higher education. Sometimes Extrinsic motivation can have a negative effect on students as they only work for to achieve something for themselves. In this case they might not actually learnt something out of the lesson on even if they learn or by heart the lesson the knowledge might not retain in their brains for future use as they are only studying those lesson to get a good marks in the exam only. While intrinsic motivation can be really helpful for the students as they are doing it for themselves and to experience something new, to explore more.

In our society the majority of students study because of the extrinsic motivation. They are working extremely hard to get trophies; prizes etc. that’s the reason behind the number of pass percentage in the nation is getting increase every year. The whole system is working in the same way. The policy makers spend millions of millions rufiyaa each and every year to achieve the national target of 65% pass in 5 subjects in O level exam. And I have to say they are sailing towards their goals steadily. Bu the hidden question is are we achieving our goal? The only answer which we can give is “no”.

First of all we can see from all corners of the society how our young generations are performing. Majority of them are jobless, restless and hopeless bunch of people roaming here and there. There are students who have achieve 5 passes in O level exam and still cannot find the way of living in the society. There are no respect, no values and no rules anymore. If we are educating them properly I don’t believe we can see what we are seeing in our society today.

Second of all the by doing so we are destructing the National Curriculum. The so-called 5 key competencies cannot be achieved in million years if we are going the same direction as today. The policies have to be change to rejuvenate our respectful way of life. The whole system has to reform in order to instill the good behavior to our future generations. Ways of motivation have to be changed to gain the values and Islamic way of living in our society.

TPI

The five of the perspectives outlined (Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing, and Social Reform) I have got pretty even result for all of the above-mentioned perspectives. The bars are almost same height. More over my individual perspectives were strongly held except for one perspective.

On the other hand I have got highest in the perspective “apprenticeship”. In addition to this there are 3 perspectives with the same height and one recessive. As each and every person will think differently there are some extent that I agree with the score and some that I don’t agree with.

Checking on the sub scores B, I, A (beliefs, Intention, Actions) I have come up with very even scores in general. Almost all the score there are at least two (I,A) common and sometimes (B,I ) common. More over the difference between the beliefs, intentions and actions are very small ( + or – 1). I agree with this score as always my action goes with my intention and beliefs.

Big Picture

Big Picture

Maldivian education system is on a negative trend. Of course there was a well plane curriculum and it has been reviewed recently. The national curriculum comprises all varieties to form a good society. But the question is “Why aren’t we achieving our objectives? “ Are the teachers not aware of the curriculum? No. Teachers are well cognizant of teaching methods and practice. There are plenty of reasons behindhand. 

As a Muslim country the top priority is given to our religion according the National curriculum. But it’s only written on the curriculum. First of all there is no system to assess the practicing part of Islam, which actually is mentioned in key competency. For an example in Islam students learnt about prayers and all but there is no system to give them marks for the practicing part, which actually is performing the prayer. So there are many students who know theory about the prayer and gets “A” grades in Islam but still don’t know how to pray.  As the whole country has fallen to result based learning and teaching system there is much more urgency to produce the results instead of achieving our main objectives. In addition to this teachers are evaluated according to the results they produced in the exams.

On the other hand we have been undertaking an oversea exam. Which also swing our attention to results more.  As we focused more on results the next most important key competency (Thinking Critically & Creatively) is been fading. Since the most effective teaching method, student centered learning, is altering to more teachers centered learning. Schools in all over the country are looking for good results, as that is the only way that they can acquire necessities from higher authorities. Accordingly they encourage teachers to create good results by any mean. As a result teachers are creating all the notes, questions, essays etc. that is harming the students thinking critically and creatively, making them much lazier and uninteresting to subjects.  A well known example can be taken from our own country during 2010, a school have been found guilty of copying during O level exam as all the candidates have written a same answer incorrectly for same question. Ultimately Cambridge University has found out and suspended the school.

In addition to this the government policies play a key part in this issue. First of all governments have crafted the National curriculum. Therefore they themselves are most responsible to facilitate the fellow policies accordingly to accomplish the key competencies in National Curriculum. But the “the Big Picture” is different. Policies are not related and supportive to each other. For example giving awards to schools as well as individuals who got good results in O level as well as in A’ level exams. The so-called “ National Target” is another unreasonable example of this. Aiming for a pass percentage of 65 in 5 subjects highlights the importance of the task not the key competencies.

In conclusion, we cannot accomplish the key competencies in National Curriculum unless we change our policies. Perhaps assembling our own exam is another way we can achieve the key competencies plus different assessment methods would come really practical when it comes to attain the distinctive key competencies in National Curriculum. More over a transformation will not occur in overnight, but a decent modification would be worth waiting for.