• Discuss the need for a change in the role of teachers.
• Explain theories of motivation in own words.
• Apply these concepts in classroom setting.

The contemporary concept of teaching has radically changed the role of a teacher - you are no longer seen as a dispenser of information, rather your prime responsibility now is to manage the learning needs of your students. Sounds odd - may be, but after you go through the subsequent discussion, you would agree with the need to change your orientation and your role.

Over the past several centuries the education systems in India have changed periodically, because of socio - political changes. Changes in education system are naturally affected by societal necessity. A analysis of the different educational patterns of India fairly well illustrates this point.

The earliest pattern was in pastoral India which was a Guru - Shisha Parampara. Learner's urge to learn was the starting point of this pattern. With the passage of time, the pastoral society transformed into a feudal society. This marked the setting up of Universities like Nalanda and Takshashila, to which aspirants of higher education travelled over long distances. Learner motivation was again a strong point here. The Muslim influence led to appearance of two parallel streams of education, the Pathshala and Madarsa. During this period, desire for social mobility became a recognisable factor in learner motivation. With the arrival of the British, the system of education underwent a major change - the teacher became a paid agent of the educating agency and the learner's objective changed to obtain a certificate. The prospect of social mobility became so strong that education came to be seen as a commodity that would pay dividends in the long run. The rigorous stands and discipline of the past gradually gave way to mediocrity.

After independence, India announced universalisation of education and equal opportunities for all as the basic principles of educational policy. This induced a sea change in the educational pattern, as the state took the responsibility of educating citizens, irrespective of social or economic status, motivation or aptitude.

The gradual growth of commercialisation became more apparent, governed by the law of supply and demand. With the growth in the supply of certified job seekers, the rush for certificates of 'higher levels' was triggered. However, this rush was not for imbibing higher education per se, but for certificates thereof. The aquisition of knowledge had taken a back seat. Whereas, the earlier systems of education aimed at mastery learning, today it is the certification and not learning that really matters.

The industrial revolution, which was going on side by side during this period, also faced similar problems The liberal industrialisation in free India especially during last decade forced the industry from operating in a seller's market to a buyer's market. This prompted a search for cost effectiveness, economy and conservation, Machines could produce more, provided the operators were willing to operate them for longer periods. This brought to the forefront, the importance of motivation as a single factor in influencing productivity. A lot of research was done to this end with the result that the principles of motivation are now thoroughly tested and well accepted. This changed the entire outlook and spectrum of manages who made increasing use of these principles to increase productively.

Let us try to extrapolate some of these principles to the management of learning, keeping medical education in mind. First, we shall look at some general principles of motivation and then examine how these can be applied to medical education.

Motivation can be defined as the willingness to exert high levels of effort towards goals, conditioned by the ability to satisfy some individual needs. Thus, it is not a personal trait, but is the result of interaction of an individual and the situation. One may find it difficult to stay with a text book for more than 10 minutes, yet read a complete novel at one sitting ! The three key elements in this concept are effort, goal and need.

The effort element is a measure of intensity, but high levels of effort alone are unlikely to lead to a favourable result, unless the effort is channelled in a particular direction. Therefore, the quality of effort is also vary important. Effort that is directed towards and consistent with goals is the kind  one should be seeking. Need, in this terminology, means some internal state which makes certain outcomes appear attractive.

A large number of theories have been advanced to explain the concept of motivation. We will not course you with all these details but discuss only those which are relevant to your role as a teacher - manager.

Let us illustrate this further. Suppose a student who has been scoring 80% marks in the unit tests, gets only 50% in the term examination. His immediate reaction will be - how can I score so poorly when I had prepared in the same way as I used to do before ? Certain changes may be immediately apparent in his behaviour. He is no longer driven to attend the class regularly ; when he attends, he dreams a lot, resulting in an empty notebook instead of several pages of notes. One can describe this as lacking motivation. However, let us try to explain this phenomenon in the expectancy terms.

Studying and preparation (effort) is conditioned by it resulting in answering the questions correctly (performance) which will produce a high grade (reward), which he believes will lead to prestige and other benefits (individual goal.)

The attractiveness of the outcome, which in this case a good grade, is high. But what about the performance - reward linkage ? Did he feel that the grade truly reflected his knowledge ? Did the test fairly measure what he knew ? If the answer is 'yes' the linkage is strong. If it is 'no' then at least part of the reason for reduced motivation is his belief that the test was not a fair measure of his performance. May be the grading method was poor, may be too much weightage was given to trivial matters ; may be the teacher was biased - these are examples of perception that influence the performance - reward linkage, and thereby the level of motivation.

Another possible demotivating force may be the effort - performance relationship. If the student believes that he cannot pass the examination regardless of the preparation, then the desire to study will drop. He places a low value on his efforts leading to answering question correctly and therefore, lessens his efforts.

Based on these considerations, a strong case is made out for improving the objectivity of examinations. Concepts of validity, reliability, difficulty level etc. have to be religiously incorporated in our examination system. You can say with confidence that if examinations test what they should (valid), are free from examiner bias (reliable) and neither too difficult nor too easy, they can exert a potent motivating influence on the student. We also like to make a passing reference to Thorndike's law of success, which are associated with success. The corollary of this is that if examinations pose question which demand "rote memory", the students will become memorisers. On the other hand, if they demand critical thinking, them students will learn that way.

A strong case is also made out for formative assessment to strengthen the performance - reward linkage of the student. He should see for himself that his efforts succeed in getting him a good grade.

Like most other theories, expectancy theory also has its own critics. Suffice it to say that if students are actually rewarded for performance, rather than on extraneous factors, validity of expectancy theory is high. This can also explain why a large number of medical students exert a minimal level of effort on learning and rely on non academic methods to make good grades. This model, if adopted, will also encourage teachers to design a motivational climate that will increase the probability of effective learning.

B. Goal Setting Theory :Propounded in 1960, it states that the intention to work towards a goal is a source of work motivation. Enough evidence has accumulated to support this theory. Specific goals increase performance, difficult goals when accepted increase performance and feedback leads to better performance.

Specific goals produce a higher output than does a generalised goal of 'do your best'. An in - built feature of this theory is the provision of feedback which helps to identify the discrepancies between what they want and what they have done - it acts as a guide behaviour. Self - generated feedback is considered a more powerful motivator than externally generated feedback.

This brings us to the process of setting objectives i.e., behaviours which we expect the student to acquire at the end of a course. Learning is likely to be easier and better, if a student knows that after learning a chapter on hematinics, he should be able to calculate the dose of iron in a one year old child with moderate anaemia. Objectives also give evaluation a result oriented emphasis.

A related concept of this theory is the approach of management by objectives (MBO) which illustrates the path goal model of leadership. Let us explain it a bit more in the context of management. MBO changes the role relationships of subordinates and managers. Employees are given more responsibility for determining objectives and encouraged to take initiative to plan their methods and pace of work. The role of management also changes. After reaching a consensus on the goals, managerial role because a supporting one. Thus a manager says How can I help more often than Here's how you should do it.

The best illustration of the concept of MBO can be seen in problem based learning. When students set their own objectives, and in effect construct their own curricula, learning is stimulated. This also takes care of obsolescence of knowledge by promoting independent study habits that can be a basis of life long learning (or' learning to learn' as it is called in management training). Even more important than this is the attitudinal change, which allows the student to view colleagues as co - operators rather than competitors. In a subsequent chapter, we have discussed about PBL, which will give you a clearer understanding of application of these management principles in class room situations.

C. Core - dimensions of jobs : It has been postulated that every job has certain facts, which can be called as core - dimensions. Five aspects are now widely recognised and include - task identity, task variety, task significance, autonomy and knowledge of results. Let us take a quick look on these aspects, as viewed from the point of view of learning.

(i) Task - identity : When the role of an effort can be understood in terms of final outcome, identity is said to be high. This can be illustrated by a simple example. A laboratory technician who pours only boiling carbolfuschin on a sputum smear and then passes it on to the next will have a low identity compared to one who does the complete Z. N. staining and then looks for AFB.

As managers of learning, task identity is very important to us. Since we have to operate within a structured curriculum, task variety and task - significance can't be manipulated easily. However, task identity can and must be untilised to maximum advantage.

In our present system of medical education, no effort has been made to bring task identity to a high level. The student is taught elaborate biochemical steps but he does not know as to what use the knowledge of Kreb's cycle will be in the clinical setting. He is taught on bioavailability of drugs. but he is not told the importance of this when confronted with a patient. Task identity or what we can call as learning in context is very important for the students to organise their long term memory. This supports the logic of integrating basic and clinical sciences throughout the medical course.

(ii) Autonomy : People need autonomy at work because it enhances satisfaction and increases productivity. Autonomy however, is not independence or freedom ; rather, it means either absence of constraints or presence of facilitators. It means absence of supervision as a control. In another sense, it could mean organisation of autonomous work groups, peer relationships   which foster understanding and open dialogue. It places value on internal rewards as a major source of satisfaction.

From our point of view, we can view autonomy freedom to decide the means to reach the objective, increased discretion regarding time span and the effort required to achieve the objective.

Grating autonomy to medical students will require that most of us will have to change our faith from pedagogy (learner is dependent person, whose experience is mainly to be built on) to androgogy (learner is a rich resource for self - directed learning who is motivated by internal incentives). The learner will have to be delegated increased responsibility for initiating, defining and researching his own learning.

(iii) Knowledge of results or feedback has been discussed earlier under the goal setting theory. What needs to be mentioned here is that the concept of autonomy cannot succeed without an inbuilt system of feedback, for it would then become anarchy. However, care has to be taken to ensure that feedback itself is not used by the teachers as a controlling device. Feedback must not only be available but also immediate. It should be descriptive rather than evaluate ; facilitating rather than controlling.

The core dimensions viz. task, autonomy and feedback can be used for calculating an index, which is called the motivating potential score (MPS) and is represented by the formula, MPS = Task x Autonomy x Knowledge of results. If we grade the three components on a scale ranging from 0-1, a fairly comprehensive idea about the motivating potential of that particular subject can be obtained. More than figures, this formula makes an important point - that all three components on a scale ranging from 0-1, a fairly comprehensive idea about the motivating potential of that particular subject can be obtained. More than figures, this formula makes an important point - that all three components are essential if we have to motivate the students to devote maximum efforts towards learning. If the subject is very interesting and important, if regular class tests ate help, but if there is no autonomy to study, the net score world still be zero !

You must have enjoyed reading and entirely new kind of symbiosis - between teaching and management. More and more educational psychologists are favouring this kind of approach because of its beneficial effect on learning. You may be feeling that in our kind of set up, it may be difficult to apply this concept. To some extent you are right - but when you go through the next chapter, you will appreciate the changing trends in the educational scenario. You will also appreciate that both the methodologies discussed in chapter 23 use many of these principles liberally.