Helping Students Motivate Themselves

Practical Answers to Classroom Challenges

Larry Ferlazzo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138132467
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317930259
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Give your students the tools they need to motivate themselves with tips from award-winning educator Larry Ferlazzo. A comprehensive outline of common classroom challenges, this book presents immediately applicable steps and lesson plans for all teachers looking to help students motivate themselves. With coverage of brain-based learning, classroom management, and using technology, these strategies can be easily incorporated into any curriculum.

Learn to implement solutions to the following challenges:

• How do you motivate students?
• How do you help students see the importance of personal responsibility?
• How do you deal with a student who is being disruptive in class?
• How do you regain control of an out-of-control class?
• And more!

Blogger and educator Larry Ferlazzo has worked to combine literacy development with short and rigorous classroom lessons on topics such as self-control, personal responsibility, brain growth, and perseverance. He uses many "on-the-spot" interventions designed to engage students and connect with their personal interests.

Use these practical, research-based ideas to ensure all of your students are intrinsically motivated to learn!

Part I

Classroom Culture

How Do You Motivate Students?

I work so hard at trying to get these kids motivated. Some are, but so many aren’t. They just seem to want to get by—if that. I try to encourage them—I’m their biggest cheerleader! But it can get so tiring. I feel like I’m pushing a rope with some of my students. Why can’t they just want to achieve instead of having to be pushed into it?

Strategies that teachers will often use in efforts to motivate students include offering incentives and rewards—“If you read a certain number of books you’ll get a prize!”—or cheerlead relentlessly—“Good job, Karen!” It’s also not unusual for teachers to just “give up” on some students, “They just don’t want to learn!”

One lesson community organizers learn is that you might be able to threaten, cajole, badger, or bribe someone to do something over the shortterm, but getting someone to do something beyond a very, very short timeframe is a radically different story.

Organizers believe that you cannot really motivate anybody else. However, you can help people discover what they can use to motivate themselves.

This is very similar to what Edward Deci, one of the premier researchers and authorities on intrinsic motivation, wrote, “The proper question is not, ‘how can people motivate others?’ but rather, ‘how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?’” (Deci, 1995, p. 10). In fact, this perspective is in keeping with the original word roots of motivation. It comes from motive, which, in the fifteenth century, meant “that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way” (“Motive,” n.d.).

When we are trying to motivate students—often unsuccessfully—the energy is coming from us. When we help students discover their own motivation, and challenge them to act on it, more of the energy is coming from them.

Community organizers call it the difference between irritation—pushing people to do something you want them to do—and agitation—challenging them to act on something they have identified as important in their lives.

This chapter first briefly reviews research that demonstrates the longterm dangers of the incentives and rewards system many of us use to “motivate” our students. Next, a few strategies are discussed that a teacher can immediately implement in the classroom to help students find their inner motivation. Finally, the chapter ends by identifying ways to “set the stage” and help students identify more sources of intrinsic motivation.

Four detailed lesson plans and related reproducibles are included.

The Dangers of Incentives and Rewards

Many studies show that—contrary to what many of us believe—providing rewards to induce desired behaviors can result in long-term damage to intrinsic motivation. As Daniel Pink states in his book, Drive (2009, p. 8), “Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.”

Researchers believe this loss of intrinsic motivation happens because contingent rewards—if you do this, then you’ll get that—force people to give up some of their autonomy (Pink, 2009, p. 38). Deci (1995, p. 2), Pink, and William Glasser (Van Tassell, 2004) all highlight this need for learner autonomy as crucial for students and for all of us. As economist Russ Roberts (2010) commented in an interview with Pink, “Nobody wants to feel like a rat in maze.”

Rewards (and punishments) are effective, however, in getting people to do mechanical and routine work that can be accomplished simply. For example, they can result in employees working faster on an assembly line or in getting students to make basic changes in their behavior in the classroom. However, rewards can be destructive in advancing anything that requires higher-order thinking (Pink, 2009, p. 46). Question 4: How Do You Regain Control of an Out-Of-Control Class? recounts what both of these types of results can look like in the classroom.

Of course, we all expect and need what Pink calls “baseline rewards” (Pink, 2009, p. 35). These are the basics of adequate “compensation.” At school, these might include students expecting fair grading, a caring teacher who works to provide fairly engaging lessons, a clean classroom. Pink writes:

If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all. But once we’re past that threshold, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims. (Pink, 2009, p. 35)

None of these points mean that students cannot be recognized and celebrated for their success. The key is to not hold it out as a “carrot” but, instead, to provide it as an unexpected “bonus” (Chai, 2009).

The word “incentives” comes from incendere, which means “to kindle.” The dictionary says that “to kindle” means “to start a fire burning.” The idea is not to tell students that they will die from the cold or from being eaten by wolves if they do not start a fire right now and right here and in this way. Nor is the idea to say that, if they do what we tell them, they will get an extra bag of marshmallows to toast. Instead, the goal can be to find out where they want to set their fire and why, and perhaps help them learn how to use matches or a flint, and give them advice on the best place to find some dry wood.

This chapter provides ideas on how to help students “incentivize” themselves. Although this is not the primary intent of the ideas listed here, one study has found that it can even be helpful for people to literally “bribe” themselves with rewards if they meet their goals (Kristof, 2009). This can be applied in the classroom by suggesting that students list how they can reward themselves—a night of video games, sleeping in late—if they achieve some of their goals.

Immediate Actions

Praise Effort and Specific Actions

If we only praise students in general—“You’re very smart”—many will then try to avoid taking risks and stretching themselves. They will focus more on maintaining their image and believe that they will embarrass themselves by making mistakes. Praising effort—“You worked really hard today”— or praising specific actions—“Your topic sentence communicates the main idea”—can make students feel that they are more in control of their success, and that their doing well is less dependent on their “natural intelligence” (Bronson, 2007). Question 5: How Do You Help Students See Problems as Opportunities, Not Frustrations? provides more information on this topic.

Build Relationships

Teachers building relationships with their students by showing that they care about them, and by learning about their lives, dreams, and challenges, are key to helping students motivate themselves. Dr. Jami Jones (2010) and others (e.g., Posnick-Goodwin, 2010) have shown that caring relationships with teachers can help build resiliency (the capacity to persevere and overcome challenges) among children. By learning about student interests, teachers can also help connect what is being taught in the classroom to students’ lives and discover their short- and long-term goals.

As William Glasser (1988, p. 21) and others have found, many students “will not work to learn” unless they see how lessons can help them with their short- or long-term goals. More information on how to build those relationships can be found in Question 3: How Do You Deal With a Student Who Is Being Disruptive in Class?

Use Cooperative Learning

Teaching engaging lessons is a “baseline reward” expectation of students. Boring lessons will not help students to develop their intrinsic motivation to learn. That does not mean, however, that teachers have to put on costumes and become entertainers. It can, however, suggest that teachers consider keeping lecturing to a minimum and, instead, use many of the teaching strategies that have been found to be more effective for student learning. Most of these methods include some sort of cooperative learning (Saville, 2009). These can be as basic as “think-pair-share” or as ambitious as problem-based learning or project-based learning. More information on how to implement these strategies in the classroom is found in Question 12: What Are the Easiest Ways to Use Educational Technology in the Classroom?

Show Students the Economic and Health
Advantages of Doing Well in School

Multiple studies show a wide income disparity based on educational attainment. For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, adults with advanced degrees earn four times the salary of those with less than a high school degree (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). There are similar differences b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Online Resources
• Free Downloads
• Meet the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Classroom Culture
• Part II Classroom Instruction
• Afterword
• References