HOW ATTITUTTES, IDEALS, INTEREST AND MOTIVATION RELATE TO TEACHING AND LEARNING

                     

  Attitudes, ideals, interests, and motivation are considered very important in education because they are very likely to influence the reaction of the teacher or learner. It is therefore considered appropriate to consider their significance and relationship to effective teaching and learning.

   ATTITUDES: This term is loosely used by many without really thinking about its meaning. Under this context, attitude refers to one’s feeling towards persons, ideas, institutions, practices or facts. Normally, it is viewed as feelings with emotional content because each individual is disposed to feel, believe or act in a way he likes in favor or disfavor of certain ideas or facts.

In other words, an attitude may be regarded as a disposition to act in certain ways whenever there is urge or stimulus to do so. For example, a teacher may exhibit a hostile attitude towards a pupil when the child disobeys or does something wrong. This demonstrates his attitude or feeling towards that child.

It is important to note that attitudes are not usually taught as in the presentation of facts, but are normally taught indirectly through example acquired through readings and experiencing other activities. The development of attitudes has been the concern of master teachers. Usually, the master teacher demonstrates those qualities he wants his students to adopt.

IDEALS: The term, ideal, means a standard of perfection which is generally accepted by everyone or a group of people. There is an element of subjectivity attached to ideals but in spite of this they are highly valuable in Education. This is more so because people generally place standards of perfection in everything they do. One significant factor in the teaching of ideals is that the learners gain information of what ideals are through reading, discussion, observation or through the teacher’s guidance. Students are more inclined to accept such a concept when the teacher himself has been found to uphold certain ideals or standards.

INTERESTS: This is a major determining factor in the learning pupils. The zeal with which students enter into any learning activity is indicative of their interest  in that particular activity. In terms of learning, learners are prone to learn more efficiently those things that seem to interest them. Thus teachers should endeavor to harness learner’s interest as a means to effective teaching. In other to achieve success in teaching, the teacher should create interest among his students if such does not exist. The teacher should make efforts to find out interests, attitudes, Ideals and goals of his students. This information will, undoubtedly, be a great asset in his teaching and future association with the students.

MOTIVATION: It is evident that every individual has several basic drives, wants, needs, and interests which constitutes motives. Motivation therefore refers to the reason why people generally strive to achieve a need or a certain objective. Under the situation, Pupils exert themselves to learn to improve themselves as a result of motivation.

  Any pupil who has the strongest desire to perform well and works very hard at it will surely do so but if he or she lacks motivation, the height may never be attained even though all the other learning conditions are favorable. Evidence has shown that strong motivation has sometimes caused learners to perform to levels that were not actually expected of them. Apparently, differentiation in achievement among students will be a result of motivation if all other factors are equal such as ability level, state of health, and emotional and social adjustment. Naturally, it has been observed that what constitutes a strong motive for one student may have no effect on another; there is no uniformity in the motivational drives of students.

To conclude, it should be noted that for any effective teaching and learning to take place, attitudes, ideals, interests and motivation must be carefully looked into before any interactions. The teacher has the powers to work on these carefully before meeting the students.