Motivation

Students tend to enjoy learning and to do better when they are more intrinsically (rather than extrinsically) motivated to achieve.

Research shows that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation play a role in enhancing student learning and mastery across all domains. To be intrinsically motivated means to complete a task because it is personally and internally rewarding. To be extrinsically motivated means to complete a task in order to earn a reward or avoid punishment. Intrinsically motivated students work on tasks because they find them enjoyable, whereas extrinsically motivated students engage in learning tasks as a means to an end. Yet, not all tasks are inherently interesting.

Teachers call upon both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation at different points and in different situations. As students develop increasing competence, the knowledge and skills that may have been developed extrinsically provide a foundation to support more complex tasks, which become less effortful and more enjoyable. When students have reached this point, learning often becomes its own intrinsic reward.

 
Teachers can promote students' intrinsic motivation by:

• Emphasizing feedback over grading.
• Appeal to student autonomy where possible, such as providing choices of projects that meet the same goals, and that are both challenging but not out of reach for each student.

Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and process information more deeply when they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.

Mastery goals are oriented toward acquiring new skills or improving levels of competence. Students who hold mastery goals are motivated to learn new skills or achieve mastery in a content area or on a task.

In contrast, students who adopt performance goals are motivated to demonstrate that they have adequate ability or to avoid tasks in an effort to conceal a perception of having low ability.

In typical classroom situations, when students encounter challenging materials, mastery goals are generally more useful than performance goals.

 
Teachers can help students foster mastery goals by:

• Emphasizing individual effort (avoid social comparisons).
• Providing student evaluations in private.
• Providing constructive praise with specific information.
• Encouraging students to see mistakes/wrong answers as learning opportunities.
• Individualizing the pacing instruction.
• Understand when performance goals are appropriate and how to harness constructive uses of competition.

Teachers' expectations about their students affect students' opportunities to learn, motivation and learning outcomes.

Most teacher expectations about individual student ability are based on students' past academic performance and, for the most part, may be an accurate representation. In some cases, however, teachers come to hold inaccurate beliefs. An inaccurate teacher expectation that creates its own reality has been labeled "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

 
To avoid negatively affecting student learning, motivation and outcomes via self-fulfilling prophecy, teachers should communicate high expectations and standards to all students by:

• Continually assessing the reliability of the information used to form student expectations.
• Exercising a "self-check" method to see who is participating in classroom interactions and whether everyone is getting equally detailed feedback on assignments.
• Never giving up on a student.

Setting goals that are short term (proximal), specific and moderately challenging enhances motivation more than establishing goals that are long term (distal), general and overly challenging.

Short-term, or proximal, goals are more motivating to students because it is easier to judge progress toward proximal goals. Specific goals are preferable because they are easier to quantify and monitor. Moderately difficult goals are most likely to motivate students because they are typically perceived as challenging yet attainable.

 
Teachers can provide opportunities to set short-term, specific and moderately difficult goals in the classroom by:

• Documenting student progress and doing regular student-teacher check-ins.
• Enabling students to become more comfortable setting organized distal goals with specific sub-goals.
• Facilitating students to become better at setting distal goals using contracts.