Motivation

Motivation Challenge 4: The Student Does Not See an Adequate Payoff for Doing the Work

Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student requires praise, access to rewards, or other reinforcers in the short term as a temporary ‘pay-off’ to encourage her

References

  • Akin-Little, K. A., Eckert, T. L., Lovett, B. J., & Little, S. G. (2004). Extrinsic reinforcement in the classroom: Bribery or best practice. School Psychology Review, 33, 344-362.
  • Daly, E. J., Martens, K. K., Barnett, D., Witt, J. C., & Olson, S. C. (2007). Varying intervention delivery in response to intervention: Confronting and resolving challenges with measurement, instruction, and intensity. School Psychology, Review, 36, 562-581.
  • Kazdin, A. E. (1989). Behavior modification in applied settings (4th ed.). Pacific Gove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
  • Kern, L. & Clemens, N. H. (2007). Antecedent strategies to promote appropriate classroom behavior. Psychology in the Schools, 44, 65-75.

Motivation Challenge 5: The Student Lacks Confidence that He or She Can Do the Work

Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student has a low sense of self-efficacy in a subject area, activity, or academic task and that lack of confidence reduces th

References

  • Jacobs, J. E., Lanza, S., Osgood, D. W., Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Changes in children’s self-competence and values: Gender and domain differences across grades one through twelve. Child Development, 73, 509-527.
  • Linnenbrink, E. A., & Pintrich, P. R. (2002). Motivation as an enabler for academic success. School Psychology Review, 31, 313-327.

Motivation Challenge 6: The Student Lacks a Positive Relationship with the Teacher

Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student appears indifferent or even hostile toward the instructor and thus may lack motivation to follow teacher requests or

References

  • Braithwaite, R. (2001). Managing aggression. New York: Routledge.
  • Fields, B. (2004). Breaking the cycle of office referrals and suspensions: Defensive management. Educational Psychology in Practice, 20, 103-115.
  • Kazdin, A. E. (1989). Behavior modification in applied settings (4th ed.). Pacific Gove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
  • Kern, L. & Clemens, N. H. (2007). Antecedent strategies to promote appropriate classroom behavior. Psychology in the Schools, 44, 65-75.
  • Maag, J. W. (2001). Rewarded by punishment: Reflections on the disuse of positive reinforcement in schools. Exceptional Children, 67, 173-186.
  • Mendler, A. N. (2000). Motivating students who don’t care. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.
  • Sprick, R. S., Borgmeier, C., & Nolet, V. (2002). Prevention and management of behavior problems in secondary schools. In M. A. Shinn, H. M. Walker & G. Stoner (Eds.), Interventions for academic and behavior problems II: Preventive and remedial approaches (pp.373-401). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

Finding the Spark: More Tips for Building Student Motivation

Teachers can feel overwhelmed when faced with students who are unmotivated to learn.

Encouraging Student Academic Motivation

One of the greatest frustrations mentioned by many teachers is that their students are often not motivated to learn.

Jim's Hints

The ideas presented here to boost student motivation all stem from a single assumption: that people are most likely to learn when they are fully engaged and interested in the learning task.

When planning any academic activity, teachers can follow the useful exercise of (1) imagining that they themselves are going to be the students and (2) brainstorming about ways that an instructor might motivate them to learn. The lesson here is simple: Students are not so different from us: If we become inattentive when listening to an instructor speak from a lectern for 90 minutes straight, our students probably will too!

Activities Classroom

Description: The st

Syndicate content