Cognitive and social motivation of educational activity

The category "motive" refers to the most important in generala number of sciences, and therefore treated fairly widely. As applied to educational activities, it will be most expedient to resort to the definition of this category, which A. Leontiev proposed,

A.N. Leontiev, first of all, suggested not to identify the concepts of goal and motive, since they are different in their psycho-behavioral nature. In addition, he argued that the motivation of learning activities is cooperative - that is, one motive can manifest itself in different ways, and even be completely different, when striving to achieve the same goal, and, conversely, the aspirations of one and the same the same motives.

The motive, in the most simple formulation, representsa factor that induces a person to do something. All of them can be classified into conscious and unconscious. For example, a student can clearly understand that he must study, while his own motives for learning activities may not be clear to him. They become more aware only with the narrowing of the educational task and the specifically formulated local goal, for example, it is possible to motivate the first-grader to do his homework, so that he does not upset his parents with bad marks. But this does not mean that this motif will spread to the understanding of the importance of homework in general.

Investigation of the motivational nature of man,especially schoolchildren, is a difficult task and requires the study of their entire hierarchy, so that its formation in the interests of learning represented a systematic and integral process.

In this study, the starting point can beserve the thesis that any human activity is poly-motivated, that is, the cause of a single act or action may be different motives. There are so many of them that, for the convenience of their study, they are classified for various reasons. Here are some types of motivation that are directly related to learning activity and its results:

- negative motivation, manifests itself as a factormotivation for learning on the basis of understanding by the student that if he does not study, it will entail negative consequences for him in the family, school, among peers, etc.

- Positive motivation of educational activity, which, as a rule, manifests itself in two main forms.

In some circumstances it is deterministicsocial goals of a person, a student, for example, the desire to enter a prestigious educational institution after graduation. Such a position turns into the installation of the student into a permanently positive attitude toward the teaching, because it is perceived by him as part of the overall social task.

In other circumstances, a positivemotivation of educational activity is manifested exclusively as a motive that does not relate to the solution of social tasks of positioning. In this case, it acts as a factor prompting to learn in order to simply be an intellectually developed person, an inquisitive person.

Modern science argues that the motivation for learning activities includes many motives, which can be divided into two groups.

Cognitive motives are different in thatdirectly related to the learning process. The second group, social, characterizes the student's connections to other people, but indirectly influences his teaching.

The basis of cognitive motives is the following:

- broad motives, that is, those that directly guide the student to master the knowledge, which, as it were, "trigger" interest in learning.

- educational and cognitive, these are those that encourage students to master the teaching methodology in a broad sense, that is, the methods and methods of teaching as such.

- motives for self-education include all those thatorient the student to learn the ways of obtaining educational information and therefore encourage him to apply for this to teachers, parents, adults, literature, etc.

Social motivation of educational activityincludes also broad social motives and narrow ones. The first include everything that helps the student understand the social significance of the teaching, its social utility. The latter help form the desire to acquire status due to their knowledge gained in the course of successful teaching. They highlight the motives of social cooperation, which move the young man to communicate, interact with peers, and any forms of collective activity.

It is important to understand that the diversity of the motives of theactivity does not exhaust all the difficulties of its research, the point is that in the course of the exercise the formation of the motivation of the teaching can change, therefore the important task of the success of the teaching for each teacher and educator (in a broad sense) is the task of monitoring the dynamics of its changes.