Learners naturally learn when they are motivated and have an enhanced focus towards learning. This fundamental learning touches on the inner thinking of the learner and refers to the centrality of emotions and their role in enabling learners to achieve success. Emotions are highly interconnected with both personal learning and how we ‘Connect’ with others in our collective journeys. Motivation, and positive feelings, drive the learner to engage with the doing and thinking fostered by the other aspects of the LXF foundations and are typically interconnected with how we ‘Act’ and ‘Reflect’. Learners learn more, initially, when they are focused on mastery rather than performance and when they have a belief in their capabilities, competencies, and ability for learning growth. Such feelings towards learning enable learners to be intrinsically, and intuitively, motivated.
Positive personal emotions and thinking enable connections, persistence, and commitment, which are integral to enhanced learning experiences. The research on learner motivation identifies how people move towards enhanced learning when engaged and motivated by internal reasoning and secondly external stimuli. That is why the fundamental of intrinsic motivations is seen as an enabler to increase learner activites and fosters the persistence required to complete prescribed learning outcomes. The ability to ‘Connect’ with our intrinsic motivations, for some, moves us to deeper learning based on embedded thinking and belief patterns.
We find, and seek, many of the motivational fundamentals integrated across our Learner Experience Framework (LXF). When applied in an intuitive way we can see the emergence of a sustained intrinsic motivation in personal and intuitive learning pathways. For example, learners who can connect, and guide their own learning journey, have the fundamentals for self-directed learning and demonstrate an intrinsic motivation to learn. Self-directed learning provides an instrumental foundation for the pursuit of open and flexible lifelong learning. This provides a clear impetus for learning how to learn, in a formative way, based on a personal journey to learning. A guided approach is needed to learning how to learn by managing personal cognitive and associated learning processes. Learning how to learn that connects with the personal can also enable the learner to reimagine what is possible and ignite a desire to learn. Connecting with the learning journey, and what is possible, engages with our beliefs and motivations of why we are learning. Belief structures and motivations go ‘hand-in hand’ and engender positive thinking that often leads to deeper learning.
Students learn more when they are focused on personal mastery of learning and this inevitably leads to positive individual and collective learning experiences. This intuitively connects with our intrinsic motivations and ability to engage. Learners connect with learning, in a more intuitive way, when they have clear intentions for learning that focus on mastery, or deeper learning, that leads to practice.
Learner intentions, and goal setting, are clear enablers for taking responsibility for learning. Intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning journeys are integral to each other. Personal learning intentions, and intrinsic motivations, are integral to deeper learning and personal success. Students learn more effectively when they have clear intentions, and goals, for learning that focus on mastery. Learning goals focus a learner on deeper learning through acquiring capabilities, competencies and impact within a subject domain. Intentional learning, and associated intrinsic motivations, also leads to deeper learning that is connect to personal learning journeys that ‘open doors’ to thinking. For many this is an enabler for impactful lifelong learning.
