Research on Student Motivation

Motivated students achieve more than students who are not motivated. Student motivation was one of six key factors for increased student achievement at Bennett Woods Elementary School (Pressley, 2006). Brewster and Fager (2000:7) provide five techniques for motivating students to spend more time on task: 

1. Ensure course materials relate to students’ lives and highlight ways learning can be applied in real-life situations;
2. Allow students to have some degree of control over their learning;
3. Assign challenging but achievable tasks for all students, including atrisk, remedial, and learning disabled students;
4. Arouse students’ curiosity about the topic being studied;
5. Design projects that allow students to share new knowledge with others.

Student motivation increases when learning is linked to background knowledge. If students can relate learning to prior knowledge, they will be more inclined to engage in the learning process. Students learn when they are able to make sense of their environment and when they are engaged (Lumsden,1994). Building student motivation requires commitment on the part of the teacher to implement highly structured, multimodal lessons. When identifying the best strategies to implement academic language in the content areas, building on prior knowledge, using strong anticipatory sets which relate to the students’ real world, using projects, creating “big questions” for students to answer, and scaffolding information are key instructional strategies. Th  ey also motivate students.

Motivating students includes inspiring them to attend school. With a high divorce rate, single parent homes,  and homes where both parents work, it is easy for students to simply stay at home and play video games or watch television. If students actively engage in the learning process, attendance in school should increase (Brewster & Fager, 2000).  Deborah Stipek (2002) shows that students ask themselves three questions before completing a task: 

1. Why am I doing this task?
2. Can I succeed at this task?
3. Do I want to do this task?

Teachers who want to successfully motivate their students must be able to answer these questions. Better yet, they should design lessons and activities that allow the studentsto answer them appropriately. John Dewey, as early as 1944, reasoned that education focuses on what 

is expected, not what is relevant. Teachers spend too much time preparing students for college and not enough time relating to how the content is practical for them. John Dewey and his wife spent time in a chemistry class teaching chemistry by cooking breakfast. Many elementary teachers 

use cooking and following a recipe to teach math concepts. Unfortunately not all of our instruction is reality based, or relevant to the students. Our general education preparation in high school is geared toward the college entrance student. Some schools do have a vocational track and the vocational track(teaching relevant skills) is becoming more popular, but college prep classes are still the norm. College prep classes typically teach material which intends only to give students a “well-rounded” background to prepare them for liberal arts classes in college. Many colleges overemphasize the need to have a well-rounded background and we find students mired in the maze of general education to the point that when a major is finally selected, the college student does not have enough background when they graduate to get a job in the chosen major field. The development of high school curriculum has paralleled this trend.

With this emphasis on college prep classes comes the idea that the teacher must get through the material in order to cover all of it, which leaves little time for innovative teaching that would engage students. Also emphasized is the common notion of “habitus” which is still prevalent in education today:  The way things are is the way they have to be. In other words, we have to prepare you for college, so you have to learn all of this (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). It doesn’t matter if you can use the information in real life, but you must learn it to be prepared for college. Yes, we can teach skills which will prepare students for college in an engaging fashion. To motivate students, educators should modify instruction and include academic language strategies in order to motivate and challenge all students.

This article is taken from an educational book entitled Academic Language/ Literacy Strategies for Adolescents. Written by Debra L. Cook Hirai