What drives a baby to take their first steps? Why does a child persist in riding a bike?
What compels an adult to read every page of War and Peace? These ‘acts’ are driven by conation, defined as ‘the personal, intentional, planful, deliberate, goal-oriented, or striving component of motivation, the proactive (as opposed to reactive or habitual) aspect of behaviour’.1 In short, conation is the will or ‘urge’ experienced in doing or learning.
Conation is one of three key components of children's learning and development. Whereas cognition refers to the knowing/understanding/processing parts of brain activity and affect to feelings, the lesser known conation is the ‘action’, how we actively engage ourselves in our learning.
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